You can buy an extraordinary variety of mobile phones here, including many brands that will be unfamiliar outside China.

BBC: China diary: Electronics Street

Its evolution is producing an extraordinary variety of species.

ECONOMIST: Robot ethics

"The '80s and '90s did terrible things to the network of producing theatres across this country, and in the last 10 years there's been an extraordinary revitalisation of ambition and range and variety of work, " she says.

BBC: Are regional theatres at risk?

Mr Schama's list is the list of exceptionalisms that most people would probably draw up when contemplating this vast and extraordinary continent: its military might, its religious fervour, its immigration-shaped ethnic variety, its staggering abundance.

ECONOMIST: The American future