Earth Sandwich / City antipodes / Lanzhou
Antipode finder · China
The antipode of
Lanzhou.
Draw a straight line from Lanzhou (36.06° N, 103.84° E) through the centre of the Earth and it comes out at 36.06° S, 76.16° W, in the South Pacific Ocean, 256 km from the nearest dry land, off the coast of Chile. The other slice of an Earth sandwich would sink.
- Lanzhou
- 36.06° N, 103.84° E · about 1,640 m above sea level · 3,000,000 people
- Antipode
- 36.06° S, 76.16° W
- What is there
- The South Pacific Ocean; the sea floor there lies about 3,960 m below the surface
- Nearest dry land
- 256 km from the antipode, on the coast of Chile
- Nearest town
- Lebu, Chile · 282 km from the antipode
- Nearest big city
- Santiago · 580 km from the antipode
- Sandwich verdict
- SOGGY the other slice lands in open water
- Nearest exact spot
- 258 km away, 34 km from Hongsipu, China ⇄ near Arauco, Chile
Can you make an Earth sandwich from Lanzhou?
No, not from Lanzhou itself. The other slice would land in the South Pacific Ocean, 256 km from the nearest dry land (Chile), where the sea floor lies about 3,960 m below the surface. Boats do not count (Sandwich Law § 1.3).
The nearest place from which an exact Earth sandwich is possible is 258 km from Lanzhou, 34 km from Hongsipu, China. Its other slice would go down 30 km from Arauco, Chile.
Lanzhou is on the China & Mongolia ↔ Argentina & Chile corridor. Its guide lists where every city on both sides lands and how to make an Earth sandwich there.
How this was worked out: the antipode flips the latitude and moves the longitude by 180°. Land or sea comes from the OpenStreetMap coastline the map uses; the sandwich verdict and elevations come from the verifier's 0.2° grid (Natural Earth land, ETOPO 2022 relief); water names from Natural Earth; towns and populations from GeoNames. The city's position is GeoNames' point for it; a big city's suburbs spread tens of kilometres around that point, and the figures move with them. Generated 2026-09-29.