John Flower is Director of the Sidwell Friends School Chinese Studies Program, a former associate professor of East Asian History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and fellow at the East Asia Center at the University of Virginia. His scholarship includes publications on local history and folklife in China and Tibet.  At Sidwell Friends, Flower teaches courses on China and East Asian History, and he leads the “China Fieldwork” summer and semester experiential learning programs in Yunnan. Since 2017, he has worked on rebuilding the “China Folk House Retreat,” to serve as a site for experiential learning, environmental sustainability and people-to-people cultural exchanges focusing on traditional agriculture, folkways and craft.