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)

Jury member Nicole Kidman attends the Jury Press Conference. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

A giant sinkhole in Guatemala City, on May 31, 2010. More than 94,000 were evacuated as the storm buried homes under mud, swept away a highway bridge near Guatemala City and opened up several sinkholes in the capital. (Photo by Casa Presidencial/Reuters via The Atlantic)

In this Wednesday, May 23, 2012 photograph, a young deer and a cat share a moment in Feench village near Jodhpur, Rajasthan state, India. (Photo by AP Photo)

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

Members of the Colombian Navy stand guard on top of a seized submarine built by drug smugglers in a makeshift shipyard in Timbiqui, department of Cauca February 14, 2011. Colombian authorities said the submersible craft was to be used to transport 8 tons of cocaine illegally into Mexico. (Photo by Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters)

A worker, dressed in a protective suit, cleans Conchitas Beach contaminated by an oil spill, in Ancon, Peru, Thursday, January 20, 2022. The oil spill on the Peruvian coast was caused by the waves from an eruption of an undersea volcano in the South Pacific nation of Tonga. (Photo by Martin Mejia/AP Photo)