Dr. John Flower is co-Founder of the China Folk House Retreat, retired 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. He has thirty-five years of research experience in the Chinese countryside, focusing for the last 15 years on the multi-ethnic regions of northwest Yunnan Province. John has received research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and support for people-to-people exchange programs through the U.S. Department of State. In addition to his published work on local history, vernacular architecture, popular religion, and rural folkways, John is also a folk musician and stone mason. He currently leads student programs, both at the China Folk House in Harpers Ferry and in Yunnan, and curates the CFHR museum.