We all know that China is a progressive country. These pictures show China then and now. The changes are clear.

Beijing, 1980

Three Chinese officials proudly show the new road on the south-west of country. The local council has published this photo. In response, people began to make their own versions of Chinese visual propaganda. Go inside the post to see their versions.

The world’s longest sea bridge is the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge which is located in China. The bridge links the offshore island of Huangdao and China’s eastern port city of Qingdao. The bridge is 26.4 miles long.

Wang Xiao Kang, from China, recreated the famous Iron Man Mark I costume. It weighs about 100 lbs (45 kg) and Wang spent $450 to buy all the parts for the costume.

He must be a big fan.

This Chinese industrial zone was built on the sand dredged from the bottom of the sea. Nice.

Chinese students do their best to make their graduation day the most memorable one.

You can become famous even if you are an ordinary sanitation worker from China. Zhang from Beijing works from 5 a.m. till 4 p.m. But she still found time to practice Tai Chi. These pictures of her unusual performance appeared online, and brought her fame.

A unique optical phenomenon was seen above the sea level in the north of Haikou City at 4 p.m. on May 9. Local residents were amazed by a mirage of a ghost city that hung between the sky and sea. The miracle lasted for an hour. It appeared due to the extremely high temperature on Hainan Island that is not common for this season of the year.

Two high buildings were demolished in Ningbo to clear the way for new subway lines. The tallest 21-story building was 80 meters high.

This is known as the Immortal Bridge. It is located on Mt. Tai in the Shandon Province of China. The bridge is very unique and is made up from about five boulders from one mountain ridge to another. This bridge looks extremely risky. Take a look and see if you would cross it.

Chinese have extraordinary skills to fake any kind of products. Recently, a “beef extract” additive has been discovered that is being used by small restaurants in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Hefei to put more money in the pockets of restaurant owners by turning pork into beef. You only have to pour the additive over some pork for 90 minutes for the pork to smell and look like cooked beef.

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The sand veil over Beijing. It’s been the third time that sandstorms shrouded the capital of China.

These Chinese businesses have some very awkward, embarrassing, and outrageously funny names. Either they have no feel for the English language or they simply don’t care. The names that they have chosen for their businesses are hilarious.

You should be careful when you buy a hard drive that is made in China. There is a real possibility that you may get a 128MB flash drive rather than the 500GB hard drive that it is supposed to be. The Chinese are very ingenious when it comes to making a fake hard drive look like the real thing.

Apparently, Panda shorts are the latest fad in China. Perhaps it’s because the Panda bear is so popular in China. Whatever the reason they are very stylish.

These are the Jiuxiang Caves situated in China. It has been found that the caves in Jiuxiang are the largest cave group system with the most numerous karst caves in the country. There are plenty of stalactites of different forms, shapes and colors as well as waterfalls, valleys and a large number of natural bridges. All of it creates beautiful underground world.

Could you survive on 49 cents a day? If you lived in China and earned 49 cents per day, you’d have no alternative but to stretch those cents as far as they could go. Photographer Stefen Chow started a project called “The Poverty Line – China” which shows what the Chinese living below the poverty line can afford with the daily wage. One picture - one day.

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The Value of a Dollar

This young boy has lost his parents to AIDs. Ah Long is only 6 years old. He was born with HIV. He lives in his parents’ shack in Guangxi Province, China. And he has to fend for himself because most people are afraid to get close enough to care for him. His only friend is his dog.

This is one way to increase you profits. It is ingenious but I doubt that it’s legal.

One Chinese developer wanted to build a factory on the land occupied by one apartment building.

They could find a "peaceful arrangement” with all of the residents of the building except for one family who didn’t want to go. The developer tried everything to evict them but in vain. Then the cruel harsh measures were taken to make this family give up eventually…

This post will teach you everything you ever wanted to know about how to grow Chinese mushrooms. There are a lot of them in this factory. Apparently they are grown, packed and shipped right from this factory.

Almost 1/3 of China is sinking in garbage. Local recycling plants can process only 50% of the domestic garbage. Ecology of many cities is under threat, because the mountains of trash grow by 4.8% per year. And if this situation doesn’t change in the nearest future, all Chinese landfills will disappear under the trash by 2015.

Not so long ago, a new tallest building was completed in Hong Kong - the ICC tower, the International Commerce Center.It is 483 meters high and has 118 floors. Apparently, they soon will open the observation deck on the 100th floor. The view must be impressive.

Cosplay is a Japanese type of representation when people dress in hand-made or well designed costumes of different characters. As a rule, these are heroes of various Japanese and East Asian comics and print cartoons, graphic novels, video games and fantasy movies. Cosplays have reached China, and today more and more young people join this movement in order to stand out from the crowd and look different. Of course, these cosplays look a bit clumsy, but for the beginners such costumes are not bad at all.

This is a real Easter egg house. It was built by a Chinese designer named Daihai Fei, who has lived the house for two months. He lived in the mobile home in Beijing, China because he only had a budget of $960/month which wouldn’t allow him to rent a conventional apartment. The mobile home has a small bookshelf, a lamp that is powered by a small solar panel, a small sink, and a bed. The egg house is made on a bamboo frame that is covered with insulating material.

China is the second fast-growing economy in the world, but the number of poor people, people living beyond the poverty line and beggars doesn’t seem to diminish so far. This post is about these people.