Every trip to Europe seems to catch Dalian
Dalian is 493km from Seoul, west-northwest. Of the 524 cities in CouchColumbus's dictionary, it is the closest foreign city to Seoul. Next come Fukuoka at 540km, Nagasaki at 597km and Qingdao at 610km. At cruising speed that is a little over an hour, and the clocks are one hour behind.
This is not a piece about what is in Dalian. It is a piece about where Dalian is. Those turn out to be more different than you would think.
A number called the detour ratio
There is one value the service uses when it picks waypoints: the distance from origin to destination by way of that city, divided by the direct distance. A 1.0 means the city sits exactly on the route; a 2.0 means twice the distance. The cutoff for accepting a candidate is 1.4.
Run Dalian through that formula and you get this.
| Destination | Direct | Via Dalian | Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai | 6,783km | 6,789km | +6km |
| Cairo | 8,486km | 8,491km | +5km |
| Istanbul | 7,954km | 7,980km | +27km |
| Paris | 8,966km | 9,068km | +103km |
| London | 8,857km | 8,976km | +119km |
For Dubai and Cairo the added distance is a single-digit number of kilometres. Which is to say the great circle from Seoul in that direction runs straight over the Liaodong Peninsula. Draw the curve from Seoul to Cairo on a map and it grazes Dalian.
74 destinations out of 84
Take the 84 featured destinations, run all of them, and Dalian qualifies as a waypoint candidate for 74. For all 28 featured cities in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Dalian comes up as the closest candidate to the origin — first in line, every time. It is the first gate on the way west.
The destinations that rule it out are the near ones. Fukuoka 2.74, Osaka 2.19, Kyoto 2.18, Tokyo 1.85. They are the other way, so going via Dalian means doubling back. Shanghai drops out too, at 1.55.
The farther the destination, the more a nearby city rides along for free. Even New York accepts Dalian at 1.042. Adding 461km to an 11,053km journey is only 4%. The same 493km is fatal on a Fukuoka route and a rounding error on a New York one.
A port with Russian buildings still standing
The one-line description the service keeps for Dalian is "a port where Russian buildings still stand." It is populous for a port city — around 7.45 million by GeoNames. The great circle from Seoul passes over South Korea → North Korea → China, three countries and no more. A list that looks exactly like the shortest international route in the dictionary.
Not many people will pick Dalian as a destination. But draw a route to Europe or the Middle East and it will keep showing up on screen, because it is not a destination — it is a doorway. Some cities play that role on a map.