A competitor poses before the Tough Guy Challenge endurance race on January 27, 2013 in Telford, England. Every year thousands of people run the 8 mile assault course which involves freezing temperatures, fire and ice. (Photo by Michael Regan)

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)

Visitors watch a tree decorated with about 10,000 Easter eggs in the garden of the retired couple Christa and Volker Kraft in Saalfeld, central Germany, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. The Kraft family has been decorating their tree at Easter for more than forty years. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

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)

Technicians check a CRH high-speed train at Shanghai Hongqiao High-speed train base on December 28, 2011 in Shanghai, China. China's railway stations have started today to sell tickets for the 2012 Spring Festival travel season scheduled to run between January 8th and February 16th, centred around the Chinese New Year which this year falls on January 23rd. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

Hanging bird cages are displayed on poles during a bird-singing contest in the Rueso district in Thailand's southern province of Narathiwat on March 23, 2014. Hundreds of bird owners from Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore took part in the traditional contest held every year. (Photo by Madaree Tohlala/AFP Photo)

Paris authorities began draining the Canal Saint-Martin, a popular waterway that attracts tourists and revelers in the French capital's trendy northeastern 10th arrondissement, for the first time in 14 years, Paris, January 5, 2016. (Photo by Christophe Geyres/SIPA Press/Newscom)

A colourful sky before sunrise on Whitley Bay beach on December 21, 2015, as December could be the mildest across a large part of England since records began more than 350 years ago, forecasters have said. (Photo by Owen Humphreys/PA Wire)