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)

Gorillas at Royal Burgers’ Zoo, Arnhem, Netherlands, on November 28, 2013. (Photo by Vidi Photo/Startraks Photo New York)

Bikini Contest in Daytona Beach, Florida’s Atlantic coast, circa 1980s. (Photo by Evan Hurd/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

In this photo taken Monday, March 5, 2018, s*x worker Irene sits in her brothel in Juba, South Sudan. As World Women's Day is to be marked across the globe and women across much of the Western world have galvanized around the #MeToo movement, South Sudan remains a place where women face grinding difficulties and rights experts say most women remain voiceless. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)

In Paris, doctors, orderlies and nurses demonstrated as well as all over France to remind the government of its promises on the hospital, in the middle of the “Segur de la sante” on June 16, 2020. The demonstration brought together several thousand people, with a few clashes on the esplanade des Invalides at the end of the day. (Photo by Jan Schmidt-Whitley/Le Pictorium Agency via ZUMA/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Guests are seen at the end of the Etro Spring/Summer 2021 Men's collection and Women's pre-collection livestreamed show at the Four Seasons hotel, amid the coronavirus outbreak, during Milan Digital Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, July 15, 2020. (Photo by Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters)

The symbol for “One Orlando” is spelled out at a makeshift memorial at Lake Eola in downtown Orlando, Fla., Saturday, June 18, 2016. Nearby, visitors lit candles and prayed at a larger memorial, at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, to mourn the victims of the Pulse massacre. (Photo by Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP Photo)

A man dressed as Father Christmas learns how to use Zoom on a laptop in the grotto at Bamburgh castle in Northumberland, UK on November 3, 2020, it was due to open on November the 21st but due to the new national lockdown he will now be speaking to the children via Zoom on a computer. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Images via Getty Images)