~charming imaGes Of china~

The entrance to Wong Tai Sin Temple, in Kowloon, Hong Kong, bustles with activity. This Taoist shrine is famed for its gardens and for the fortune tellers who frequent its grounds.

A Chinese farmer pauses to regard an ancient landscape of terraced rice fields in China's Hunan Province.

A terra cotta army bears silent witness to an emperor's greatness. More than 2,200 years ago thousands of unique clay soldiers and horses were commissioned to help Qin Shi Huang Di conquer the afterlife as he once did China.

Buddhist monks gather each year at Nechung Monastery to celebrate Losar—the Tibetan New Year. The distinctive yellow hat designates members of the Gelug school, to which the Dalai Lama belongs.

The world's largest Buddha statue dwarfs a visitor to Leshan, China. The 231-foot-tall (83-meter-tall) Buddha was carved from a riverside cliff in the 8th century to safeguard boaters on the treacherous waters below.

Prayer flags stretch toward the Potala Palace, which is perched on Red Mountain in Tibet's Lhasa Valley. The former winter home of the Dalai Lama has symbolized Tibetan Buddhism since the 7th century.

A cyclist peddles a Yangshuo street in the aftermath of a spirited celebration. The wet pavement is littered with spent firecrackers.

A plethora of signs point the way down Nanjing Road—the bustling heart of Shanghai's shopping district. The road ends at the city's waterfront Bund.

China is rapidly modernizing, yet the bicycle still provides transportation for many of its 1.3 billion people.

Sunlight brightens the flanks of China's Great Wall—one of the most ambitious construction projects in human history. The wall was a barrier between China and "barbarian" lands.