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Michael Yamashita

Tea from the hills around Ya’an is among the oldest grown in China.

The Sichuan-Tibet Highway threads through Tro Pass, climbing to an elevation of almost 18,000 feet, as it follows the old tea-horse trade route.

Tea travels the old way, by foot, as a nomad heads back to camp carting two bundles bought in the Sichuan market town of Ganze. A bundle holds four bricks, more than 20 pounds of tea. Given Tibetans' consumption—drinking up to 40 cups a day—that is barely enough tea to last a month.

In Can Tho, Vietnam, flower merchants sell marigolds on the street. A February 1993 story travelled the Mekong River, highlighting towns along the way.

At a Tibetan monastery in Bamei, China, bowls of black tea keep visitors awake for meditations. Behind them are candles made of yak butter.

Using information given by Marco Polo in his Travels, Venetian monk Fra Mauro created this map of the world around 1450, more than a century after Marco Polo’s works had been published. Now held in the Marciana National Library in Venice, it shows a world whose contours were growing more precise and detailed than Europeans had ever known before

At an altitude of 11,975 feet (3,650 meters), Lhasa is higher than any other city on our list. The 17th-century Potala Palace, former home of the Dalai Lama, hovers above the city like a giant Buddhist scroll.

People swim in a man-made pool along the coast of Beirut, Lebanon.

A bright blue swimming pool sits within Marcus Garvey Memorial Park in Harlem, New York City.

A tourist approaches China’s southernmost point in Hainan, China, at the edge of the South China Sea.