The Red Flag Canal, about 60 kilometres northwest of Anyang in Linzhou, is one of the most extraordinary engineering projects of the Maoist era — and unlike many such projects, it genuinely worked. The county of Linzhou had suffered chronic water shortages for generations; in the 1960s, tens of thousands of local workers, organised into brigades, spent a decade diverting water from the Zhang River by cutting channels through the sheer rock faces of the Taihang Mountains. The main aqueduct clings to cliff faces in a way that seems impossible until you are standing on it.
The scenic area now open to visitors includes walking sections of the canal, the tunnel entrances cut through solid rock, the arched aqueducts that carry the channel across ravines, and a museum covering the project's history. The landscape is dramatic — the Taihang cliffs here drop hundreds of metres, and the canal path provides vertiginous views over the valley below. It's an hour's drive from Anyang by taxi or chartered vehicle. The combination of heroic engineering and genuine human sacrifice makes this one of the more emotionally complex sites in Henan: you can admire the achievement while remaining aware of the political context in which it was built.