A traditional hemp-weaving craft passed down through generations of rural grandmothers in Northwest China has been named an official licensed product line for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, forcing a grassroots network of village artisans to rapidly modernize for the global sports market.

The Intangible Cultural Heritage special licensing program selected the "Baniao" hemp-weave brand, founded by 59-year-old master artisan Zhang Jing. Zhang's workshop will supply more than 10 distinct product lines across three design series. The inventory features camel motifs honoring the ancient Silk Road alongside designs inspired by cuju — an ancient Chinese ball game recognized by FIFA in 2004 as the earliest historical ancestor of modern soccer.

For Zhang, it is neither an accident nor an overnight success. It is the result of nine years of patient grassroots work, training left-behind women in villages and turning an almost lost art into a livelihood.

Zhang's earliest lessons in hemp weaving came without formal instruction. Growing up in the 1970s, she watched her grandmother pull hemp fibers from a door frame, spin them into tough threads, and stitch shoe soles or small household items. At age 7 or 8, she started experimenting on her own. That childhood resourcefulness has stayed with her. Today, her company produces bags, ornaments, dolls and decorative pieces.

What sets Zhang apart is her clear-eyed understanding of the sector's core problem: intangible cultural heritage crafts look beautiful on museum shelves, but if they cannot put food on the table they will not survive.

"If you stick rigidly to the old forms, young people won't buy them," Zhang said. "But if you lose the traditional technique altogether, there's nothing left to pass on. The rule is to preserve the ancient method, but let the design evolve."

She has made a deliberate shift from "display pieces" to "daily necessities". Her designs now favor smaller, functional items: phone bags, pendants, keychains and small accessories that blend traditional weaving techniques with contemporary tastes.

To bring these daily necessities to life, Zhang developed a production model that mirrors her designs. Over nine years, she has built a distributed production system with a hub in Yinchuan's Xixia district.

Her team collaborates with workshops in several nearby villages and communities. Each site is responsible for a different stage of production: some focus on rough processing, while others handle final assembly. Training is held regularly to ensure quality and consistency.

Thousands of villagers have been trained over the years. Several hundred people now take regular orders, with around 100 in stable employment. Most are left-behind women caring for elderly parents or young grandchildren.

This model of rooting in the countryside and empowering women not only changed the lives of villagers, but also brought Baniao Hemp Weave into a broader spotlight.

At a tourism promotion event in Hainan province, the special licensing program was drawn to Baniao's strong Silk Road aesthetic.

When researching cuju, she found records of Han Dynasty (206 BC–220) balls unearthed in Gansu province, made of leather and stuffed with feathers and hemp thread.

She also learned that, in 2004, FIFA recognized that soccer originated from Chinese cuju.

"That gave me a quiet sense of pride. Soccer is the world's game, but its great grandfather is Chinese cuju," she said.

The special licensing program has led Zhang's workshop to professionalize in ways it never had to before. Each product now requires a barcode for authenticity. Craftspeople's ages and working hours must be reported. Every item needs bilingual design statements and six photos of documentation.

"It is also a kind of rebirth. Traditional objects must meet market standards to become real products," Zhang said.

For Zhang, it represents not just hemp weaving, but Ningxia's intangible cultural heritage as a whole — seen by the world.

"Aesthetics keep changing. We just have to keep learning — and let the work speak for itself," she said.