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 pile of destroyed cars of teachers sits outside Briarwood elementary school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma May 22, 2013. Rescue workers with sniffer dogs picked through the ruins on Wednesday to ensure no survivors remained buried after a deadly tornado left thousands homeless and trying to salvage what was left of their belongings. Curvature of horizon in the photo is due to an ultra-wide angle lens. (Photo by Rick Wilking/Reuters)

Karis, an eleven week old lion cub, plays in fallen leaves brushed up by keepers in her enclosure at Blair Drummond Safari Park, near Stirling, Scotland, on November 20, 2013. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

Three Chinese soldiers at the time of a civil war in China. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images). 1922

Pope Francis passes past a portrait of himself as he arrives to meet youths in Santo Tomas University in Manila, Philippines, Sunday, January 18, 2015. Francis is in the Philippines on Sunday, the final full day of a weeklong trip that also took him to Sri Lanka. (Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo)

Characters dressed as Elmo and Cookie Monster who pose for tips take a photo by request from a tourist (2nd R, black pants) in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, January 29, 2016. (Photo by Rickey Rogers/Reuters)

A girl collects drinking water at Dala river outside Yangon, Myanmar March 3, 2016. Some 650 million people, or one in 10 of the world's population, have no access to safe water, putting them at risk of infectious diseases and premature death. Dirty water and poor sanitation can cause severe diarrhoeal diseases in children, killing 900 under-five a day across the world, according to United Nations estimates. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Young Korean women wearing hanbok (Korean traditional dress) walk inside Gyeongbok Palace on March 27, 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. There has been a trend in recent years for the young Koreans to wear the traditional Korean dress, Hanbok. Wearing the traditional dress, they will walk around downtown Seoul on weekends taking selfies, and share their memories with friends on social media, and also to promote their traditional dress to foreign visitors. (Photo by Jean Chung/Getty Images)