In her village Zhang Yi Gui was known for embroidering traditional baby shoes. Embroidered flowers for girls and embroidered tigers for boys. Based on my experience in the United States (US) I did not expect to find such a large teaching collection of folk art associated with an art and design school. Over the course of my work in China I discovered other art and design schools, such as the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, with similar teaching collections.Listening to Zhang Yi Gui's story I could not help but be cognizant that over the course of Zhang Yi Gui's life she witnessed multiple cultural, social, and political changes in China. Born not long after the abdication of the last Qing emperor, she saw the rise of the Communist party, the Japanese occupation of China from 1931 to 1945, a civil war, famine, the Cultural Revolution, and the global recognition of China's growing economic and cultural influence.From 2007 through 2019 I co-directed, with Kristin Congdon, a project associated with the documentation and interpretation of China's cultural heritage. This project, titled ChinaVine, had as its mission to educate English-speaking/reading children, youth, and adults about China's cultural heritage. This project, first initiated in partnership with Shandong University of Art and Design's Folk Art Research Institute, was based on a collaborative methodology, including extensive fieldwork, in which scholars in Art Education and Folklore from China and the US cocreated content for the project's website. It was within the context of this project that I met Zhang Yi Gui. The project would expand significantly over the next twelve years to include additional Chinese and US scholars engaged in collaborative field work in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou; in rural Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan provinces; and the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province. The scholars associated with the project were careful to include examples from among China's fifty-six ethnic groups. While initially focused on the traditional arts such as embroidered shoes, papercuts, dough toys, puppets, kites, jewelry, clothing, paintings, and New Year woodblock prints, the project expanded to include contemporary art informed by tradition. In this regard extensive field work was conducted in the former farmers' village of Songzhuang, located east of Beijing, that was rapidly transforming into a contemporary artists village.