Tom Carter is an internationally published freelance photographer and travel writer. Carter has travelled extensively throughout all 33 Chinese provinces and autonomous regions and is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, the most comprehensive collection of imagery of contemporary China ever published by a single author.

Web: www.tomcarter.org

Traffic assistants are a unique necessity to Shanghai, the largest city in China and the eighth largest city in the world, with a population of over 20 million people and counting.

Gossiping grannies in Shanghai’s fast-disappearing old quarter.

Shanghai’s wild-child novelist, Mian Mian, author of Candy, a tale of the PRC’s disaffected youth. Candy was labelled ‘spiritual pollution’ and officially banned by China’s government.

Another gossiping granny in Shanghai’s fast-disappearing old quarter.

Shanghai municipality has, over the past decade, undergone a redevelopment renaissance, one of the largest construction campaigns in China, which unfortunately also includes the demolition of its centuries-old neighbourhoods.