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)

People take part in a sunset ceremony on the lower slopes of Glastonbury Tor as they celebrate Samhain at the Glastonbury Dragons Samhain Wild Hunt 2017 in Glastonbury on November 4, 2017 in Somerset, England. To celebrate Samhain, the Glastonbury Dragons, alongside Gwythyr Ap Greidal, the Summer King and the Winter King, (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

In this photograph taken on October 4, 2016, an Afghan baker prepares bread at his shop as he waits for customers in Lashkar Gah, the capital city of Helmand province. For years Helmand was the centerpiece of the Western military intervention in Afghanistan only for it to slip deeper into a quagmire of instability, with almost the entire southern province teetering on the verge of collapse. Intensified fighting has killed hundreds and forced thousands to flee to besieged capital Lashkar Gah, sparking a humanitarian crisis as the city – one of the last government- held enclaves – risks falling to the Taliban' s repeated ferocious assaults. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar/AFP Photo)

A man cries as he carries his daughter while walking from an Islamic State-controlled part of Mosul towards Iraqi special forces soldiers during a battle in Mosul, Iraq March 4, 2017. Reuters Photographer Goran Tomasevic: “Both screaming in terror, a father and the young daughter he cradled in his arm fled through the rubble-strewn streets of Wadi Hajar, transformed in a flash into a battleground between Islamic State fighters and Iraqi special forces. They and their neighbours – some wearing rubber sandals, some barefoot – were running from an IS counter-attack in this part of Mosul, dodging gunfire as the militants closed in”. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A competitor wearing a kilt and standing on a barrel throws a bowling ball between her legs during the “Brigaball” contest at the annual Bundanoon Highland Gathering, showcasing traditional Scottish events, held in the town of Bundanoon, located southwest of Sydney, April 9, 2016. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

Bar girls use their mobile phones outside a bar along the Walking Street where bars and sеx scenes are a commonplace July 31, 2016 in Pattaya, Thailand. Thailand's first female minister of tourism would like the sеx trade that is a huge business in the country to be banned. Tourists flock to Thailand for many sights including beautiful beaches but also for sеx tourism. Cities like Bangkok and Pattaya are well known as hubs of the Southeast Asian sеx trade, despite the fact that prostitution has been illegal in Thailand since 1960. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Syrian girls carry bags with bread as people queue up outisde a bakery in a rebel held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo on July 12, 2016. Since mid-2012, Aleppo has been roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east, and has suffered enormous destruction in the war that has killed more than 280,000 people nationwide. Last week, a government advance brought regime troops within firing range of the Castello Road, the only remaining supply route into the opposition-held east, effectively severing rebel neighbourhoods from the outside world. With their route to the outside world cut, there is no new flour coming to the city's bakeries, and fuel to light their ovens is also now hard to find. (Photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP Photo)

A Kashmiri girl holds her brother in the doorway of their home while watching protesters shout pro-freedom and anti-Indian slogans during mourning and protests held in downtown Srinagar on August 22, 2016, following the killing of teenager Irfan Ahmed by security forces. Teenager Irfan Ahmed was killed after he was hit in the chest by a teargas canister fired by Indian security forces to quell pro-freedom protests in the Kashmiri capital on August 21. More than 60 civilians have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, and thousands more injured in the worst violence to hit the Himalayan region since 201. Indian-administered Kashmir has been in the grip of almost daily anti-India protests and rolling curfews sparked by the killing on July 8 of a popular rebel leader, Burhan Wani, in a gunfight with government forces. (Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP Photo)