US Teacher Reunites With Chinese Desert Greening Hero After 26 Years

US teacher Ronald Sakolsky reunited with desert greening campaigner Yin Yuzhen in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, yesterday, more than two decades after a donation linked their lives across the Pacific, China Central Television reported.

Sakolsky arrived at Ordos Ejin Horo Airport after more than 30 hours of travel and transfers. He had landed in Beijing early the same day and is scheduled to visit Beijing, Inner Mongolia and Henan from August 23 to September 1.

At the reunion, Sakolsky said he wanted to be seen as a "laonei," or insider, rather than a "laowai," or foreigner. "China changed me," he said in a video of the meeting. "It made me a better person."

Sitting beside Yin and holding an old photograph from their first meeting, he praised her as the true hero of the story. "Fifty thousand trees," he said, recalling how her years of work had transformed the sandy land. He also said Yin "did not spend a penny on herself" from the donation.

Their story returned to public attention in May, when a video of Yin, a national model worker, asking netizens to help find the American donor was widely shared online. In the video, she said the US$5,000 he gave in 2000 had helped her plant a forest in the Mu Us sandy land, and she hoped he could return to China to see it.

Sakolsky was soon found in the United States. After learning that the saplings had grown into more than 50,000 trees, he said he was surprised and wanted to visit the desert in Inner Mongolia.

The friendship began in Luoyang, Henan Province, in 1999, when Sakolsky, then 42, was teaching through a China-US teacher exchange program. He saw an English-language report on CCTV-4 about Yin and her husband planting trees for years in the Mu Us sandy land and was moved by their work.

He later donated US$5,000 through a foundation to support Yin's desert control efforts. The money helped buy and plant saplings that have since grown into a large forest.

Yin said she was delighted when she heard Sakolsky would come back. "With the dollars you gave me back then, I planted a forest for you," she said earlier. "When will you come and see it? I am waiting for you in the desert."

To welcome him, Yin steamed traditional Chinese buns and picked fresh fruit and vegetables grown in the desert, saying she wanted Sakolsky to taste the warmth of Chinese hospitality.

At a regular Foreign Ministry press briefing on May 25, spokesperson Mao Ning praised the friendship between Yin and Sakolsky, saying it was a vivid example of people-to-people exchanges between China and the US.