A Coast at Walking Pace: Public Life on Binhai Road

In a September 2025 report in Oriental Outlook, Dalian resident Zhang Xiaodong had already completed an early-morning walk along Binhai Road’s wooden walkway. The detail is small, but it changes the frame. The coast is not only a place to arrive with a camera; it can also be part of a repeated routine.

The report places that walk between hills and sea. At walking pace, the relationship is experienced through succession rather than a single panorama: the next turn matters, as does the changing position of the water relative to the path. The walkway brings a spectacular setting into the scale of an ordinary activity. For Zhang, that coastal sequence formed part of an ordinary morning.

The city’s walking festival shows another use of the route. In May 2025, the main event of the 23rd Dalian International Walking Festival began at Xinghai Square and followed routes including Binhai Road. The provincial sports bureau described different distances, local family groups and participants from other countries.

An organised event changes the meaning of movement. A route that can hold a private routine becomes a shared occasion, with a common starting point and chosen distances. Families and visiting participants followed different distances through a landscape also used for independent exercise.

Binhai Road gives Dalian a different spatial story from the radial streets around Zhongshan Square. There, institutions face a common centre. Here, the coastline supplies a sequence, and the walker encounters it over time. Neither account alone describes the city.

The 2025 festival was one organised use of that coastal space. Daily walks give it another rhythm. Together, they make the sea part of the city’s public life through repeated use, as well as through the view.