China is a land of contrasts...

The first thing that is abundently clear to anyone who has visited china is that there is a bit of a air quality issue going on...

Take, for instance, this photo from Beijing (at the construction site of the city's new largest building):



Chengdu, is about 2000 kilometers south of Beijing. It looks like this:



The problem even overwhelms most trips to the Great Wall:



It even looms, among other things, above Tiananmen:



Also, the country can be a bit crowded sometimes. This is the tiny little ancient village of Lijiang in Yunnan:



And yet...there's still some really beautiful places...like this countryside pagoda, also in Yunnan:



and there are also cool animals...alive... :



....dead... :



...and slightly less dead... :



You can even get lost on strange communist tourist trap islands:



But, after all is said and done, the best thing about China is the people: