Huai'an Government House is one of the city's strongest links with its old role as an administrative centre on the Grand Canal route. The compound preserves courtrooms, offices, ceremonial spaces, and courtyards that show how imperial local government presented authority in brick, timber, and carefully arranged gates.
It is worth seeing alongside Zhou Enlai sites and the older canal-town streets, because it adds a different layer to Huai'an: not revolutionary memory or food culture, but the machinery of county rule. Give yourself enough time to read the layout rather than treating it as just another walled compound.