Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Traders push goods hundreds of miles by bicycle along the trans-African highway which runs east/west in DR Congo. War lords along the way patrol through the rebel controlled gold mining region.
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  • A Pygmy woman hauls a piece of mahogony from the Ituri Forest.
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  • A Pygmy church choir is led by a Bantu tribesman.<br />
<br />
Pygmies have no land rights.  The colonizing Belgians assigned land rights to residing ethnic groups and this still holds. Because Pygmies are nomadic and had no chiefs, they did not receive land rights.  Pygmies are at the bottom of the social caste system—they have no power.  Strong ethnic groups still have strong land rights.
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  • A Pygmy net hunter captures a blue duiker in a net near a hunting camp deep in the Ituri Forest. A duiker is a small antelope and main source of protein for Pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Mbuti drape nets between trees and flush game toward them.
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  • Mbuti Pygmies at a forest hunting camp where people gather to flush out duikers into their nets.
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  • Gold mining in northeastern Congo. Quarantesept and Cinqante are gold mining towns near Ituri forest reserve in DR Congo. Hundreds of people from Congo and Uganda come to work at the mines.
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  • A Pygmy choir sings and dances and is led by a Bantu tribesman at a Pentecost church in Epulu.
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  • A Pygmy preacher at the Pentecost Church in Epulu.
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  • Mbuti Pygmies at a forest hunting camp in the Ituri forest. The future for indigenous tribes is threatened by logging, mining and urbanization moving into the forest.
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  • Refugee Pygmies near their leaf huts are threatened by logging companies and a broadening modern world. .
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  • A young child holds a hunting bow as Pygmy children in a village play outside.
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  • Mbuti Pygmy families at a hunting camp build a fire for cooking the Ituri forest.
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  • Pygmies bend branches to create shelter at hunting camps. The semi-nomadic tribal boys are going through the circumcision ceremony called nKumbi are accompanied the adults to the camp.  They have their own structure and are sent off into the forest to hunt or fish.
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  • Pygmies bend branches to create shelter at hunting camps. The semi-nomadic tribe moves through the forest to find a good site and create a place to congregate.
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  • Mbuti Pygmies at a forest hunting camp. They are semi-nomadic and build nighttime shelters for sleeping.
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  • Mbuti Pygmies at a forest hunting camp pass time together. They move with supplies and build other camps as they hunt for food.
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  • Mbuti boys during a puberty ritual where a medicine man watches over the ceremony.
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  • Shoppers wear pajamas on the street while admiring clothing in the 200 block of Guangdong road near the Bund.
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  • Passengers gaze out the windows of a bus in Shanghai. <br />
<br />
This easy migration of people from city to city is still hard for me to get used to. Seventeen years ago when I was traveling between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, they all had a ring of policemen around them checking identity papers. I was in China trying to get through those rings of security during the Tiananmen Square uprising. I remember traveling with wire service photographers and driving through those checkpoints at 90 mph and seeing the policeman jump up and down on the dais—literally hopping mad—but there was nothing they could do because they did not have guns or radios. After being absent 17 years, I made (technically) five trips to China in about a one-year period. The growth is so fast paced I could feel the energy and the stress on the street. It makes you realize that our empire is over, but you can’t really understand that without being there. Even though the NYT has multiple stories, every day, on the growth and complexity of the Chinese economy, the average American has little idea what this means other than a fear that increased Chinese fuel consumption will somehow affect what they put in the tank of their SUV. Robert Frank photographed twentieth-century America, recording our coming of age—the baby boom, the start of television, car culture, modular housing, and relative wealth distributed throughout the middle class. His photographs are of progress, technology, plenty, but also the weary faces of waitresses and elevator operators who were desperately trying to join the economic party. Those 1950s faces remind me of a line in Leslie Chang’s story about modern China: “What looks like freedom just feels like pressure.”
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  • Standing in line and dressed in formal wear are some of the 70 couples in the annual Rose Wedding Festival, a mass marriage event.
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  • Uniformed restaurant workers carry baskets of food from the kitchen for diners. They pass under a canvas sheet that shows a restaurant with people eating.<br />
<br />
All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176304-1.jpg
  • Uniformed restaurant workers carry baskets of food from the kitchen for diners. They pass under a canvas sheet that shows a restaurant with people eating.<br />
<br />
All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176304.jpg
  • A woman and children stand in line at the check-out of the first Sam's Club store in China.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-9.jpg
  • In an over-the-top, exotic spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai, nude men walk from the locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with sea turtles and other endangered species. From there they can play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes or meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176399-1.jpg
  • In an over-the-top, exotic spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai, men walk from the locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with sharks and other endangered species. From there they can play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes or meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176399.jpg
  • Women sing out 'Stop in the Name of Love' in the spot where Diana Ross recorded the song.
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  • In villages between Lake Victoria and the Serengeti Ecosystem, truckloads of rotting fish carcasses are driven to the local markets and sold. <br />
<br />
The filets were cut off in the processing plants in Musoma and shipped to Europe overnight, and Africans get only the bones. <br />
<br />
This is a cotton production region and these people have just sold their crops.  They have money to buy good food, but don’t have the option to buy their own fish from their own lakes.
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  • Truckloads of rotting fish carcasses are sold to local markets in Africa after meatier parts of the fish are processed for European markets.
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  • Schoolgirls at a ceremony celebrating the opening of a new clinic.
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  • Schoolgirls at a ceremony celebrating the opening of a new clinic.
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  • Elysee, owner and designer of Zemo Elysee fashion shop with models.<br />
he number of women entrepreneurs in China is growing. About three in ten businesses in China are women owned and, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, women account for one-quarter of total China-based entrepreneurs.
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  • Chinese workers gather to talk on a fishing boat at port of Zhapo.
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  • Shrimp fishermen lay their nets in the waters off of Senegal. Women process fish on the shore at Karountine, northwest of Ziguinchor.  A growing number of Africans live on the coast because the ocean is one of the last sources for protein available. <br />
<br />
Authorities have attempted to get rid of this village, but since fishing is the most important aspect of St. Louis, the community has fought off the government to stay here.
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  • Tourists are invited on stage to dance with a Rapa Nui dance group preforming traditional music and dance.
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  • People sitting outside a bar in the Over the Rhine district of Cincinnati, Ohio.
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  • A day and boarding school in the Nakulabye neighborhood of Kampala.
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  • People wait in line for food in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
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  • Nyangatom tribe village of Kangaten on both sides of the Omo River.
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  • Twilight over Lumale Camp in the Kara village of Dus.
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  • Men, women and children of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Suri men share a laugh in a village outside of Tulgit.
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  • Fish inspectors in surplus tanks get stuck in pursuit of poachers.<br />
<br />
 An anti-poaching enforcement trip starts in Sobolevo, the salmon poaching epicenter. Men ride on tanks and in boats attempting to spot poachers who put out nets to fish–they can see where sediment on the rocks was washed away and a net was dragged. Their suspicions are confirmed when they find spilled caviar. They follow many paths into the woods finding the poacher camp. <br />
<br />
The patrols are just outside Soboleva in the heart of the most poached area of Kamchatka. Soboleva is on the Sea of Okhotsk, just off the Kamchatka shelf and is only accessible by MI-8 helicopter.
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  • Street scene of a military tank under Soviet era communications towers, a child on a bike and resident walking on the unpaved streets of Khailino in Kamchatka.
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  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
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  • People enjoying a riverboat cruise on the Ohio River.
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  • People walk through Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
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  • El Molo people at the water's edge in Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
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  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327763.JPG
  • Markets line the streets of the Senegal fishing village of Saint Louis on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
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  • Costumed revelers rest in the shade of a cantina while parading for Day of the Dead celebration in rural Mexico.
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  • A satellite dish in the fishing village of Pulau Misa has living quarters for live reef fish divers as well as structures out on the water that hold nets for live reef fish. <br />
The reefs in many areas are laid bare to supply Chinese restaurants with live fish. The global trade in live reef fish may top a billion dollars a year, with many species captured by cyanide or traps. Use of dynamite to kill reef fish increases the toll taken by the live trade.
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  • Senegalese artisanal fishermen are miles out to sea in the waters off of Dakar in a pirogue or canoe. With a warm upwelling and perfect nutrient conditions, the Senegal coast is the last of the wild west of fisheries. Senegalese look to the ocean for protein where the Mauritanians to the north look to the desert. Senegalese often raid Mauritanian fishing grounds.
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  • A neon sign is reflected in the window of a crowded bus in the gold shopping area of Chennai, India.
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  • Workers transport laundry baskets full of jellyfish at a fishery. They fish on cloudy days when they can see the masses of jelly from their boats.  A cultural difference; the Chinese like to eat jellyfish because of the texture.
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  • Street scene of Kireka outside Kampala.
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  • A young girl is part of a typical fishing family enjoying a meal of mussels and other seafood.<br />
<br />
Spain continues to be the European country that consumes the most fish, with 92% of Spanishs consuming fish and aquaculture products every month.
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  • A typical fishing family enjoys a meal of Spanish paella with rice mussels and other seafood. One of the world's busiest seafood ports, Vigo, auctions half a million tons of fish daily contributing to pressures on marine life with fish stocks in decline.
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  • Climbers leave their base camp to trek on the ice field of Mendenhall Glacier. The glacier is one of many that connect to the vast Juneau Ice Field, a 1,500 square mile remnant of the last ice age, cradled high in the coastal mountain’s lofty peaks in the Tongass National Forest.
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  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Hikers follow a trail in the last light at dusk and climb to the top of weathered desert landscape for a view of the driest place on earth. The Atacama Desert sometimes goes more than a century with no recorded measurable precipitation. The Atacama Desert is considered the oldest desert on earth. On the whole, it has experienced semi-arid conditions for over 150 million years, and the inner core—the driest spot—has been hyper-arid for over 15 million years.
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  • A farm outside of Harappa.
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  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • A birthday party in one of Istanbul's immigrant neighborhoods, Masiak.
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  • Men in suits of tree lichen celebrating Schleicherlaufen.
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  • Hikers walking along the top ridge of a large sand dune in the Atacama Desert. Known as the driest place on earth, the desert is also considered the oldest. It has experienced semi-arid conditions for over 150 million years, and the inner core—the driest spot—has been hyper-arid for over 15 million years.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187548.jpg
  • Men and women of the Kara tribe gather for an evening dance.
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  • Hamar children pack onto a donated slide at the village of Logira.
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  • Costumes of fur are worn during the carnival known as Pust.
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  • Men in suits of tree lichen celebrating Schleicherlaufen.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_1114476.jpg
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, schoolboys walk through the dump.
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  • Locals shoot a game of pool.
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  • Moscow children, born with terminal-limb deficiency, in these cases the left forearm is missing, are all from two neighborhoods, were the incidence of congenitally deformed children seems to be higher than elsewhere.
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  • Under the shelter of a tent, camel contest entrants eat lunch.
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  • Women workers move dirt out of a giant reservoir of water.
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  • The kitchen of a seafood restaurant in Hong Kong.<br />
<br />
According to WWF figures, Hong Kong has the second-highest per-capita seafood consumption in Asia, and is the world’s eighth-largest seafood consumer.<br />
<br />
Damaged by decades of human activity, Hong Kong’s rich marine ecosystem requires concerted conservation effort.
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  • Women workers move dirt out of a giant reservoir of water.
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  • Dancers perform acrobatic moves while practicing BBoy or breaking, a hip hop style of street dance. The gravity defying moves are a large part of their appeal.
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  • Foreign factory trawlers at the port of Dakar are loaded with fish caught by artisanal fishermen. The EU brings in 350 million dollars a year for fish.
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  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
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  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
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  • El Molo fishermen with their catch on the shore of Lake Turkana.
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  • The Camel festival outside of Harappa.
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  • Visitors in the cellar of a craft brewery in the Over the Rhine neighborhood.
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  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers look for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump under trucks that unload.
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  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702753.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702749.JPG
  • The police and politicians have gathered Gabra and Daasanach representatives to try to solve the problem of water rights.
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  • El Molo fishermen with their catch on the shore of Lake Turkana.
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  • Fishing family on Ferguson Gulf in the Lake Turkana area of Kenya.
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  • Couples ride in a long line of flower-decorated convertibles for a mass wedding in Shanghai. They aspire to the ideal of the billboard above them—the one-child family. <br />
<br />
According to the 2010 census 118.06 boys are born for every 100 girls, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males.  In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of vehicles on the capital’s sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five years, to 3 million, or about a million more vehicles than in all of New York City.
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  • Men in blue work uniforms stand in a garden watching couples ride in a long line of flower-decorated convertibles for a mass wedding in Shanghai.
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  • A worker repairs electrical power lines above pedestrians. <br />
<br />
The need for electrical power is great in Shanghai and migrant workers are hired to hook up cables by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  <br />
<br />
A coal-fired power plant comes online every four to five days in China that can power a city the size of San Diego. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. And yet, air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
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  • From comfortable plush seats, young people watch the entertainment of a stage show including singing and dancing at the Shanghai Orient Rome Holiday Hotel.
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  • Young people dance under neon lights in the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. Bars are a little crazier in south China where there is an abundance of new wealth.
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  • Young people dance under neon lights in the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. Bars are a little crazier in south China where there is an abundance of new wealth.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176391-1.jpg
  • A woman in a green gown sits in an darkene, empty corridoriIn an over-the-top, exotic spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai. On another floor, men walk from the locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with sharks and other endangered species. <br />
From there they can play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes or meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176399-3.jpg
  • Young people dance under a multi-colored lights that glow at a club in Shanghai.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390-4.jpg
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