Residents in Jiaozuo, with an inner-city population of 870,000 in Central China's Henan province, found themselves in a life-changing situation due to the country' massive project to divert water from the south to its arid north.

Jiaozuo is the only city where the water program's central route runs directly through the downtown area. The 8.82-km-long watercourse required the relocation of about 27,000 residents, although it accounts for only 0.7 percent of the total length of the project's central route.

That route will see 9.5 billion cubic meters of water per year pumped through canals and pipes from the Danjiangkou reservoir in Central China's Hubei province to Beijing after it runs through provinces and municipalities of Henan, Hebei and Tianjin.

Photos, taken between 2010 and 2014, capture how lives have been changed by the world's largest water diversion project.