Hukou Falls is the hydraulic spectacle produced when the Yellow River, which runs three hundred metres wide across the loess plateau, encounters a basalt obstruction and is forced through a gap barely thirty metres across before dropping fifteen metres into the gorge below. The result is a cascade of extraordinary force — not particularly high by the standards of famous waterfalls, but remarkable for its volume and the violence of the constriction. Standing near the water's edge on the Shaanxi bank, you feel the percussion in your chest.
The Shaanxi-side viewing area gives you close access to the upper rim of the falls, where the river disappears into the gorge at close range. The Shanxi bank, accessible only if you cross at Jixian County to the east, provides a wider view of the falls from across the gorge and the better photographic angle for the full scale of the spectacle. The loess landscape surrounding both banks — eroded yellow cliffs, terraced fields, poplar lines along the river — is distinctively Chinese and unlike any other waterfall setting in the world.