WATCH: Chinese marathon uses unusual street-crossing system

November 17, 2025

The 2025 Nanjing Marathon took place on Sunday in Nanjing, China–and with 24,000 runners flooding the streets, you can imagine how tough it was for pedestrians to cross the course. While the event is known for its top-tier organization, race officials adopted an unusual pedestrian-shuffling system to get spectators across.

A video shared on Instagram showed police officers and race staff funnelling spectators into a roped-off pen. As a group, they’re escorted across the street, while officials redirect runners to flow around the moving cluster, splitting to either side of the rope.

It’s a slow method, moving only about 16 people at a time, and requires more than about a dozen officials to hold the ropes, redirect runners and manage the gates on either side of the course. Running Magazine