Inspiring love for embroidered tiger-head shoemaking artistry

Jilin inheritor aims to teach methods to make traditional craft sustainable.

Before dawn broke on a mid-June day in Songyuan, Jilin province, Yu Yanbo left her village carrying bags of handmade tiger-head shoes and other supplies. She was headed to Changchun, the provincial capital, where she would do something she had never imagined: teach a class at Jilin University.

Yu is a fourth-generation inheritor of the craft of tiger-head shoemaking in the Qian Gorlos Mongolian autonomous county, or Qianguo county, Songyuan. She began learning the art of embroidering the traditional shoe from her mother at age 11 and by the following year, she could independently complete the entire shoemaking process. Yu currently runs a workshop, where she teaches anyone interested in the craft.

As the train carried her toward Changchun back in June, Yu kept nervously folding and unfolding a few sheets of handwritten notes outlining the lecture she had prepared for the university's master's and doctoral students, attempting to calm her nerves. For a village embroiderer accustomed to working in her small workshop, the idea of standing before graduate students at one of China's leading universities was both a wonderful opportunity and a daunting challenge.