Standing in the rubble of her home, with the sun setting on the graves of her ancestors behind her, Li De breaks down as she describes being relocated to make way for the Chinese government's latest grand engineering project. Her house in rural Henan province will soon be submerged beneath a reservoir feeding the central route of the biggest water scheme in history – the “south-north water diversion project”.

“[The government] told us they were moving us to new lands to become rich and prosperous but they've thrown us into a fire pit,” sobs Ms Li. “The new land and houses are worthless and our lives there are so bitter.”

The peasant farmer is among the first batch of 440,000 people who will be uprooted to make way for the reservoir and a canal that will carry water from the Yangtze river and its tributaries in the south of China to the arid northern plains and Beijing.