Fancheng sits on the north bank of the Han River, directly across from the historic walled city, and the two banks have always had different characters. Where Xiangyang-side has the ancient walls, the monuments, and the tourist infrastructure, Fancheng is more workaday: markets, street food, ordinary commerce, and the texture of a Chinese city that hasn't been tidied up for visitors. The distinction between them has persisted for more than two thousand years — Fancheng and Xiangyang were historically separate settlements that eventually merged into a single city.
The best reason to cross the river is breakfast. Xiangyang's signature dish is beef noodle soup — a clear, intensely flavoured broth with rice noodles, tender beef slices, and a garnish of spring onion — eaten at outdoor stalls and simple shophouses that fold up by nine in the morning. The culture of early-morning noodle eating is taken seriously here, and Fancheng has more of the old-style stalls than the tourist-oriented Xiangyang side. The pedestrian ferry across the Han River is the traditional crossing; the newer bridges serve traffic. A walk along the northern riverbank in the early morning, watching the river traffic and eating noodles from a street stall, is one of the more rewarding ways to spend an hour in Xiangyang.