Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • People shopping at a mall with cheap goods.
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  • People enjoying drinks and conversation at a bar.
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  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
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  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
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  • Brimmed hats mark traditional costume of people of the Ecuadorian Sierra.
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  • El Molo people in the village of Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
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  • Two boys climb a grass covered hill in the Dolomites.
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  • Two brothers bring goats into the barn.
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  • Heads together, two girl friends beach-comb near the water's edge investigating sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska. <br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
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  • People play in the surf in La Serena, Chile's premier beach resort north of Santiago. The white sand beach is rain free nine months of the year and enjoys a transitional climate between the arid northern desert of the Atacama and the pleasant Mediterranean climate of the central coast.
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  • Two Masai girls looking in a vehicle mirror.
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  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, only has enough landfill waste to fill a quart jar after two years.
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  • Two women horse trainers ride near their ranch where they adopted 50 unwanted, wild horses.
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  • BLM contractors rope a young foal that was separated from his band after he was chased by two helicopters in a wild horse roundup.
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  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, only has enough landfill waste to fill a quart jar after two years.
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  • Men sitting outside a shop on a street known for wedding attire. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who move to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
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  • Sections of an oil and natural gas pipeline is stockpiled near Sobolevo.<br />
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The pipeline cuts through the marine environment, and across the shelf and through many of the salmon rivers in the country. Once completed, this will destroy river environments and open up access roads for more poaching. The new government in Kamchatka is willing to risk the salmon fisheries, which generate 30 percent of all the fish caught in Russia and 40 percent of the income, for a fraction of the natural gas and oil that exists in plentiful amounts elsewhere in Russia. Kamchatka used to be divided into two provinces with two local governments. These were combined recently with the stated objective of resource development. By resources they mean oil and gas drilling on the Kamchatka shelf with a pipeline to the port in PK. The Kamchatka league of independent experts deemed that 70 percent of all rivers crossed by the pipeline are permanently degraded for long-term fish production.
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  • China (Guangzhou) International Automobile Exhibition that began in 2003 is one of the largest international auto shows in China. This event has an exhibition ground measuring 85,000 square meters and it filled eight exhibition halls. Over 370 exhibitors from 20 other countries and regions, took part in this exhibition, which was covered by more than 1,600 news reporters representing upwards of 510 TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and online media at home and abroad. 120,000 people attended.
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  • The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook them up by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist and pulling it across an already stressed grid by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego. Energy is wasted on an epic scale. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages last year. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. Thus, China has poor foundations on which to build the subtle network of institutions and accountability necessary to manage the complexities of a modern economy and society. The lack of independent scrutiny and accountability lies behind the massive waste in the Chinese government and destruction of the environment. Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
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  • Models walk down a runway and across stage lights for a high fashion bridal show featuring designer gowns. The cosmopolitan city of Monterrey is modern and industrial attracting young people with money to spend.
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  • Singles try to find each other at an event at amusement park sponsored by a web site (www.juedui100.com) that caters to Chinese singles. The web pages of prospective Chinese partners hang all over the walls and trees and there are so many that they have to be changed every few hours. Julie, the president of the company, says that she counsels folks about going for love over stability but no one listens. She says they all want to find someone with a good job, a house, and a car before worrying about loving them or not. Even with this counseling, there is a surreal scene where young singles get up on an AstroTurf stage and recite their particulars: My name is John, I am 28 years old and I have a condo with two bedrooms. I make X amount of money a year, and I have a 2006 Volkswagen golf with a garage. This is backed up by a China Daily report: If you’re a single male living in Beijing, you need to make a mental note of this figure: 1,068,000. No, it’s not the lottery payoff you dream you’ll win next week. It’s the number of yuan you’ll need to shell out to get married. It’s going to take you exactly 12 years to save the sum on the condition that you don’t spend a penny on food, lodging or anything else.
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  • Rachel shops for a new outfit to go on an upcoming date. The fashion store called Thre3 is run by her friend on the Bund in Shanghai. Her dressing room takes two assistants to close—another example of some of the over-the-top culture. The green frock has a $2,200 price tag.
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  • Southern Metropolitan News surveys since 1989 cite Guangzhou residents as saying that “love” comes after “money” on the value ladder. In 2008 “love” slipped even lower for most people, according to a survey by the Guangzhou Social Trend and Public Opinion Study Center. The center has conducted a survey each year since 1990. Another finding of the survey is that money has universally meant more than love in the eyes of women in Guangzhou for all years the survey has been given.
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  • A diner watches people cross El Zócalo, Mexico City's grandiose main square, from the elegant Gran Hotel's rooftop restaurant. Built atop ruins of the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlán, the zócalo is now surrounded by sprawling Spanish colonial architecture, the most prominent being the Metropolitan Cathedral.
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  • Young girls are dressed in their finest for a wedding celebration in a remote village. Their families are some of the industrious people who came to Kamchatka for “northern money” had to scramble when default happened, and they survived with no state money.  Highly valued Russian caviar was their only resource between 1995 and 2005.
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  • Gold mining near the town of Quarantesept in northeastern Congo. Hundreds of people from Congo and Uganda come to work at the mines.<br />
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Villagers in the war-weary Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo scrape for gold in a shaft dug decades ago by a Belgian company. Until recently, armed groups controlled Ituri’s rich mines, using gold to buy weapons.
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  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through piles of discarded plastic bottles at a recycling center. Plastic waste and global warming are companion threats. People’s need for clean drinking water increases as temperatures rise. The size of this center in Dhaka is equivalent to three football fields. In the winter when I made this photograph, only one of the football fields was filled with plastic waste. In the summer when everyone drinks more bottled water because of the excessive heat in a Bangladesh summer, all three football fields are filled with plastic waste. The slough next to this informal factory is filled with the overburden that is either shoved away or is blown by the wind into the neighboring watershed.
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  • BBoy dancers stop traffic with their acrobatic moves on a city street in Old Quito. Hip hop is popular with young people in Ecuador, and these guys are members of a dance troupe that performs around the city.
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  • Friends come together at The Riggin Shack, a general store that is one of a few businesses in Coffman Cove, Alaska, population 200. The community on Prince of Wales Island was settled as a logging town and people stayed although the industry declined. The community offers services for visitors that include a fuel station, liquor store, lodging, guiding for hunters and fishermen, a library with Internet service and outdoor tours.
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  • Two fishermen net a salmon near Prince of Wales Island in the pristine waters of Southeast Alaska.
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  • Two girls beach-comb near the water's edge investigating crabs and other sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
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  • A tranquilized brown bear (Ursus arctos) creates a problem for Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife researchers. They darted a 16-year-old male in Kingsburg Creek tributary of the Unuk River while studying the grizzly bear range and habitat in southeast Alaska near the Canadian border. <br />
The 600-pound males slipped down the edge of a muddy embankment and was too heavy to move. With only a short time to work before the bear is revived, the two men took their research notes and then quickly built the bear a nest of branches so he wouldn’t fall into the creek upon waking.<br />
Brown bears decline in the range and numbers in the lower 48 states heightened management concern in habitat-related studies. It is believed that brown bears avoid clearcuts and are more often found in riparian old growth, wetlands, and alpine/subalpine habitat because of more nutritious foraging and better cover.
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  • Two actors warm up on a stage in an empty auditorium before performing a comedy  that requires strenuous physical moves at a theater, Teatro de la Scala in Cumbaya, near Quito.
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  • Two cowboys on horseback drive in cows to a cattle auction facility in Nebraska.
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  • Two teenagers  wearing cowboy hats float in the shallow Calamus River which is fed by the Ogallala aquifer. More plentiful in Nebraska than further south, water is used for agriculture, industry, recreation and communities' well water.
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  • A Rapa Nui man shares a moment with his pregnant Chilean girlfriend in their modest home. Local population was reduced to 111 in 1877 from outside aggression and disease, but today they number nearly 6,000 people-still outnumbered by the 100,000 tourists who come to see the ancient statues.
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  • A two generation family in their living room.
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  • Two Ladin men share the news over a cup of morning coffee in a restaurant in the village of LaVal in the Dolomites.
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  • An Aborigine family sitting outside. Two are painting a pukamani pole.
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  • A baby in a stroller and two women in an apartment.
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  • A Chinese woman who runs a chain of boutique spas on two phones.
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  • Australian Aborigine man with body paint on legs watched by two women.
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  • Father and son in the farm pickup truck (one of two images taken years apart).
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  • Father and son in the farm pickup truck (one of two images taken years apart).
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  • Two Ladin women dress in traditional clothing that is often worn on Sundays and for ceremonial occasions linked to the ancient customs. Ladins in the small village in the Dolomites divided from other ethnic relatives to the far reaches of the mountains further away from German influences. The people living here speak Italian and German, but Ladin in their first language.
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  • Two men with dogs sitting in mud along a road as a storm approaches.
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  • Two men working to extricate their vehicle from deep mud.
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  • Writer, Neil Shea, his guides and two villagers rescue a cow.
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  • Two midwives help a woman give birth at the Dan Moser Memorial Clinic.
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  • A Kara woman breast feeding two children.
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  • Russian parents with their two children.
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  • A couple watches competitors and wait for their turn to use the "misery whip, " a two person cutting saw that typically has a 4-12 foot blade and was used to fell tall Sitka spruce, hemlock and cedar trees in the region's logging heyday. Competition is fierce as loggers are timed to see who can cut through a log the fastest. The logging show on Prince of Wales island is not a tourist event, but a chance for locals to come together and show off their skills.
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  • Two nephews watch their uncle milk a cow in the pasture on the farm in a rural area near the Dolomites. The isolated mountain community LaVal has roots in agriculture speak their own ethnic Ladin language.
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  • A boy bounces a soccer ball of his head while playing on a field near a large statue of a man with two horses.
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  • A boy bounces a soccer ball of his head while playing on a field near a large statue of a man with two horses.
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  • A rainbow graces the countryside where two Turkish women walk.
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  • Photographer Randy Olson in the rearview mirror of a safari vehicle next to two female lions.
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  • A young Australian woman and two Aborigine children swimming.
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  • Two Australian Aborigine women looking out of large glass windows.
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  • Two men use lung power to top off their inflatable raft.
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  • Two women friends hang portraits of past mayors in Sylvester, West Virginia's community center.
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  • Two men cast crab traps into the Hackensack River at twilight.
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  • Two sisters gather around a blue truck.
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  • Pedestrians dash through and underground walkway that leads onto International Bridge Number one, the oldest existing link between Mexico's Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, Texas. Day and night more than four million people-commuters, shoppers and sightseers-walk across the bridge each year.
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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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  • Two men look at two sacrificed sheep.
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  • Two paint mustangs playfully bite while grazing at South Steens mountain in Oregon. The wild horses are friends and hang out with other bachelors in the herd.
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  • Two albino stallions walk through flowering shrubs and grasses at the Wild Horse Sanctuary. Until captured and removed, they were part of the cultural landscape of the Channel Islands since the mid 19th century. They are first recorded as having been introduced to Santa Cruz Island in 1830.
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  • Two foals watch studs fight, learning the behavior they will imitate when they are older. Young wild horses make friends and bond within a horse herd.
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  • Two mustangs groom each other, a common social behavior among wild horses. The mutual grooming brings heads together and reaffirms bonding between horses, reducing social tension within a herd.
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  • Two boys help their uncle on a farm in the Dolomites.
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  • Dust rises from roads that bisect a dry wheat field between two feedlots. <br />
Drought conditions intensify throughout the great plains for the past ten years with some parts of the state having "extreme drought" conditions.
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  • Two men transport hay in a cart pulled by zebu oxen.
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  • Tourists climb down steep steps the ruins of Monte Alban, a Zapotec capital with impressive architectural remains in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico. <br />
It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inhabited over a period of 1,500 years by a succession of peoples – Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs – the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography.
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  • Bubbleds mesmerize a young girl who is bathed by her mother in a bucket filled with water hauled from town since their well has run dry.<br />
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Agriculture is responsible for 95 percent of aquifer use and families on the fringes feel it. For several years, approximately 30 families near Clovis, NM,  have no longer been able to get water from their wells. They carry water home that they need for cooking and bathing.  This two-year old has a bubble bath sharing precious water with a family of nine that requires 105 gallons a day.<br />
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County Road 5 is the canary in the coal mine for Ogallala depletion. Just across the state line from here are 88,000 wells in the Texas panhandle. Those wells use approximately 200 gallons a minute according to HPWD. When they started irrigating, the wells poured out 1000 gallons a minute.
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  • A Rapa Nui man with his Belgian girlfriend live in a one-room house that has electricity but no indoor plumbing. The ocean is close by and Polynesians had a knack for colonizing even the most inhospitable oceanic rock.
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  • A native dancer, a tourist and a dog at Ahu Tahia in modern day Easter Island.<br />
Situated near the town of Hanga Roa, the ahu sits near a canoe ramp and was restored by an archaeologist in 1974. <br />
It is perched alone on a ceremonial platform.<br />
Tahai is thought to be among the earliest ahu structures on the island dating back to 690 AD.
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  • A pet lover with her dogs and friends.
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  • A pedestrian shopping area in downtown Guangzhou at night.
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  • Beijing at the time of this photo had a "one dog policy." The dog on the treadmill is a Siberian Husky and Beijing police are starting another crackdown on large dog ownership. These folks are starting to train their pet on their friend’s treadmill because if they take it outside for a walk, they risk having it beaten to death in front of them by a Beijing policeman. Owners of big dogs (over 35cm) that live within the sixth ring in Beijing have an illegal pet. Many have purchased treadmills after the crackdown began when pets were pulled out of the hands of their crying owners. A group protested in front of the zoo because there was suspicion that some of the dogs were being fed to the tigers. The activists claim dog owners tried to take policemen to dinner to bribe them, but it did not work. They say the policemen sold some of the nice animals and sent the rest to the zoo.
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  • A pet poodle gets a bath at a pet spa.
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  • A personal trainer helps a client at the Ozone Fitness Club.
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  • An afternoon in an opulent home in Huaxi.
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  • A board where singles post their information to find a partner.
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  • Parents finding a match for their daughter on a singles board.
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  • A personal trainer helps a client at the Ozone Fitness Club.
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  • October Holiday week along the Bund on the Puxi side of Shanghai where this couple is one of the lucky ones. “Bare Branches”—a phenomenon where a boy just cannot find a girl is becoming more and more of a social problem. According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. Maybe everyone eventually can have a car, but can every boy find a girl?
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  • A groom signs a wall with a kiss at the Rose Wedding Festival.
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  • A teenage schoolgirl sits in a car reading a comic book.
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  • A teenage schoolgirl sits in a car.
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  • Shopping for vegetables at a market.
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  • A model and a person in Cultural Revolution costumes at a car show.
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  • A bride and groom deliver food and drink to the villagers that are homebound after their wedding.
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  • Japan has a program that brings in Filipino and Indonesian workers to care for elderly.
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  • A pet poodle gets a bath at a pet spa.
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  • The staircase of an opulent home in Huaxi.
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  • An opulent home with three bedrooms and three living rooms in Huaxi.
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  • Elysee Yang, owner and designer of Zemo Elysee with a male model.
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  • Banna males prepare for a bull jumping initiation ritual and participants are photographed by tourists.
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  • Banna males prepare for a bull jumping initiation ritual.
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