Located on the border of three provinces in Henan, Shanxi and Hebei, the Red Flag Canal was literally built on the side of cliffs in the Taihang Mountains. It was developed as a way to access water from the Zhanghe River in Shanxi Province, bringing it back to the parched Linxian Countt, which is known as Linzhou today. Construction started in 1960. It took 10 years to build the 70-kilometer-long, 4.3-meter-deep, 8-meter-wide main stretch of the canal. A total of 350,000 local people joined the team of construction.