Nine years ago, Tom Carter traveled from San Francisco to China, responding to a job posting that turned out to be a scam. He managed to find another job as a teacher, and saved enough money to embark on a 56,000 km trip through all of China's 33 provinces that lasted two years. Carrying a camera – just a a 4-megapixel point-and-shoot – Carter captured some amazing images of the widely varying landscape, people, and architecture across the nation. Photo: Buddhist pilgrim family from Sichuan. (Photo by Tom Carter via The Atlantic)

A security personnel keeps watch before the second plenary session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on March 8, 2022. (Photo by Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters)

Mercury and Maia, fueled and overhauled, are waiting in the Tay at Dundee, for favorable weather to start the flight to the Cape, a distance of 6,370 miles. The composite machine moored in the Tay River, at Dundee, on September 23, 1938. (Photo by AP Photo)

People explore the ice covered pier in Port Stanley, Ontario, Canada, on December 27, 2022. The ice formations were created by a large winter storm which hit the region on over the Christmas weekend. Temperatures were expected to moderate across the eastern and midwest US on December 27, after days of freezing weather from "the blizzard of the century" left at least 49 dead and caused Christmas travel chaos. (Photo by Geoff Robins/AFP Photo)

Personnel from Maharashtra Home Guards, a volunteer force practice yoga near the Gateway of India monument as they mark International Yoga Day in Mumbai, India, Friday, June 21, 2024. (Photo by Rajanish Kakade/AP Photo)

A combination photo shows some of the colourful doors seen in Rabat's Medina and Kasbah of the Udayas, September 2014. UNESCO made Rabat a World Heritage Site two years ago and media and tour operators call it a “must-see destination”. But it seems the tourist hordes have yet to find out. While visitors are getting squeezed through the better-known sites of Marrakesh and Fez, the old part of Rabat - with its beautiful Medina and Kasbah of the Udayas - remains an almost unspoiled oasis of calm. Smaller and more compact, its labyrinths of streets, passages and dead ends are a treasure trove of shapes and colours, of moments begging to be caught by the photographer's lens. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A shrine maiden walks in the snow at the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura, near Tokyo, Thursday, November 24, 2016. Tokyo residents have woken up to the first November snowfall in more than 50 years. An unusually cold air mass brought wet snow to Japan's capital on Thursday. Above-freezing temperatures kept the snow from sticking, but forecasters said there could be an accumulation of up to 2 centimeters (1 inch). The last time it snowed in central Tokyo in November was in 1962. (Photo by Shizuo Kambayashi/AP Photo)

A member of the Palace staff arranges Queen Victoria's Stuart Ball costume which is part of an exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) this year at Buckingham Palace in London, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. The exhibition, Queen Victoria's Palace at the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace from 20 July – 29 September 2019, will tell the story of her 62-year reign and her life at Buckingham Palace, which began when she ascended to the throne in June 1837. (Photo by Frank Augstein/AP Photo)