East of Hancheng, the Yellow River runs through a narrow gorge between steep loess cliffs on the Shaanxi side and the Shanxi escarpment opposite. The views from the riverside road are dramatic — the scale of the gorge, the ochre cliffs, the wide river below, and the industrial installations on both banks creating a landscape that is simultaneously ancient and recently transformed. This is not a polished viewpoint but a working river, and that is part of its interest.
The contrast between the literary landscape of the Sima Qian memorial and the industrial Yellow River is one of Hancheng's defining characteristics. The coal deposits visible in the exposed cliff faces are the same ones that powered the city's economic growth and the same ones that the Han Dynasty miners worked two thousand years ago. If you are travelling between Hancheng and Linfen in Shanxi, the riverside route gives you a long view of this geography.