Retired US teacher reunites with Chinese farmer 26 years after helping fund desert reforestation

Abi Sarabia M., Philippine Canadian Inquirer
August 26, 2026

Photo courtesy: China Xinhua News

A retired American teacher has reunited with a Chinese farmer in Inner Mongolia 26 years after helping support her effort to turn part of a vast sandy landscape into a thriving forest.

Ronald Sakolsky met Yin Yuzhen again in Ordos on Sunday, August 23, more than two decades after their first meeting in the Maowusu Sandy Land.

Their story began in 1999, when Sakolsky was teaching English in Henan Province under a teacher exchange program between China and the United States. One evening, he saw Yin on television planting trees in the Maowusu, an area long affected by desertification.

Moved by her determination, Sakolsky contacted more than a dozen organizations in the United States to seek help. A Boston-based charity eventually provided a $5,000 grant.

For Yin, the amount could have been used to improve her family’s living conditions. Instead, she spent the money on saplings and kept only one banknote as a remembrance.

Sakolsky traveled to the Maowusu in May 2000 to see the project for himself. At the time, the area was largely barren, and the young trees appeared so fragile that he doubted they would survive.

He and Yin could not speak each other’s language, but they communicated through gestures and smiles as she showed him how to plant a tree.

After Sakolsky returned to the United States, the two lost contact.

For years, Yin kept an old photograph of him and would ask Americans she met if they knew how to reach him. Their connection was finally restored this year after Yin posted a video online inviting Sakolsky to return and see what had become of the trees.

Her appeal quickly spread online, and Sakolsky was found less than 26 hours after the video was posted. He then saw photos and videos of what had grown from the once-small saplings: a forest of more than 50,000 trees.

Their reunion came on August 23, when Sakolsky arrived in Ordos and was welcomed by Yin.

The following day, she brought him back to the Maowusu. There, Sakolsky saw the poplar tree they had planted together 26 years earlier. The tree, once no thicker than a finger, now stands more than 10 meters tall.

They marked the reunion by planting another sapling together.

“I planted a friendship tree in Inner Mongolia,” Sakolsky said.

Yin and her family have now planted trees across about 70,000 mu, or roughly 4,667 hectares. Xinhua, citing official figures, reported that about 85 percent of the Maowusu has been restored.

For Sakolsky, the reunion showed how a simple act of support can have an impact that lasts for decades.

He said he never expected anything in return when he helped raise the money in 1999.

“You can’t give something and then expect something back,” Sakolsky told Xinhua. “I raised that money because I wanted to thank China, and I wanted to help her make China a little more beautiful.”

Sakolsky is scheduled to stay in China until September 1, with activities including China-US teacher exchanges and a return to Henan, where he once taught.

More than two decades after one teacher decided to help a woman planting trees in the sand, their reunion stands as a reminder of how kindness, persistence and a shared effort can grow into something far bigger than either of them first imagined.

Photo courtesy: China Xinhua News