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)

This photo taken on April 5, 2013 shows Buddhist monks passing a yak in Seda Monastery, the largest Tibetan Buddhist school in the world, with up to 40,000 monks and nuns in residence for some parts of the year. Seda, known to Tibetans as Serthar is located in Ganzi prefecture in the west of China's Sichuan province and has become a hotbed of protests and violence since the Tibetan uprisings of March 2008. (Photo by Peter Parks/AFP Photo)

The waning moon is setting over the mountain “Les Cornettes de Bise” located at the border of the Haute-Savoie and the Valais canton of Switzerland in the Chablais Alps, photographed from Glutieres, January 7, 2015. (Photo by Anthony Anex/EPA)

A man sits on top of a car as he is stranded on a flooded street in Tianjin, China, July 20, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Tsewang Dolma, 33, a farmer and housewife poses for a photograph in Matho, a village nestled high in the Indian Himalayas, India September 29, 2016. When asked how living in the world's fastest growing major economy had affected life, Dolma replied: “Our culture is spoiled now. We don't wear our traditional dress”. (Photo by Cathal McNaughton/Reuters)

Revellers in Blackpool kept the bank holiday party going on May 30, 2018, taking full advantage of the warm weather and long weekend to let rip. The bank holiday booze up continued across Britain with one party-goer managing to accidentally flash her knickers in public. A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries. (Photo by NB Press Ltd/The Sun)

Three cabaret dancers sit glum-faced in the Windmill Theatre's canteen upon hearing the news that the theatre's owners have sold out to a cinema company, on October 02, 1964. The theatre, which was the first to include nudity in its shows, has been able to cope with competition from a growing number of West End strip clubs. (Photo by Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Young conductors stand in line during the steam locomotive presentation at the Kyiv Children's Railway Station on July 3, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. According to the railway's operators, the Gr-336 locomotive was built in Germany in 1951 and brought to Kyiv as part of reparations in the wake of World War II. (Photo by Alexey Furman/Getty Images)