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)

An aspiring witch performs during auditions the new witch of Wookey Hole Caves during trials held at the Somerset tourist attraction, on October 22, 2013. Around 50 applicants took part in the auditions today for a £50,000 a year (pro rata) job as the face of Wookey Hole. (Photo by Tim Ireland/PA Wire)

A Member of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) joins other strikers as they take part in a nationwide strike over issues including corruption and job losses outside parliament in Johannesburg, South Africa, October 7, 2020. (Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)

British troops covered in flames from a petrol bomb thrown during a violent protest by job seekers, who say they were promised employment in the security services, in the southern Iraq city of Basra, March 22, 2004. (Photo by Atef Hassan/Reuters)

People appear dangling as a large-scale installation art piece by Leandro Erlich, named “Dalston House”, in London, England. Part of the “Beyond Barbican” summer series of events, the interactive installation is a full facade of a late nineteenth-century Victorian terraced house built on the ground with a large mirror above it to reflect people as to appear dangling from the structure. (Photo by Dan Dennison)

A man wearing a “Pinhead” mask walks through the grounds of St Mary's Church, Whitby, during the Whitby Gothic festival taking place this weekend, on April 27, 2014. The twice yearly event attracts Goths from across the UK and beyond to the historic fishing town and is a great boost to the local economy. (Photo by Anna Gowthorpe/PA Wire)

A woman reacts as she lays flowers outside the Perm State University following a campus shooting in Perm, about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) east of Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, September 21, 2021. A student opened fire at the university, leaving a number of people dead and injured, before being shot in a crossfire with police and detained. Beyond saying that he was a student, authorities offered no further information on his identity or a possible motive. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A milkman crosses through floodwater at Chak Ali Sher village in Wazirabad district on August 28, 2025, after government issued a flood alert for riverside areas of Punjab province. Water has gushed into the eastern province, Pakistan's breadbasket and home to about half of its 255 million people, with three transboundary rivers swelling beyond their banks. The latest monsoon downpour has killed at least 13 people, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. (Photo by Aamir Qureshi/AFP Photo)