A video link at the 27th China Annual Conference & Expo for International Education (CACIE) on October 30 reconnected Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese anti-desertification pioneer, Bai Fan, head of the Luoyang No. 2 Foreign Language School Education Group, and Ronald Sakolsky, an American friend, adding a new chapter to a cross-border green story spanning 26 years.
During the CACIE Talk session in Beijing, Sakolsky announced that he had begun preparations on October 1 to establish the Sakolsky Foundation. He plans to work with the China Education Association for International Exchange to build a platform for exchanges between Chinese and American teachers and students, using people-to-people exchanges to bridge cultural divides. Communication and understanding, he said, are important bridges to a peaceful future for young people in the global village we all share. Bai Fan noted that face-to-face cross-border educational exchanges can help young people learn tolerance and respect, and see a real, multi-dimensional China. Yin Yuzhen responded with a simple observation that resonated with the audience: planting trees and nurturing people both come down to perseverance.
The friendship began in the Maowusu Sandy Land. In 1999, Sakolsky, then teaching in Luoyang, was moved by Yin Yuzhen's story of taking root in the desert to control desertification, and raised $5,000 himself to support her afforestation efforts. Yin invested the entire sum in the sandy land, planted some 50,000 saplings, erected a stone marker bearing her friend's name, and kept one dollar as a memento. The two then lost touch for more than two decades. Yin kept up her sand-control work day after day while thinking of her friend far away. In May 2026, she posted a video appeal to find him and located Sakolsky within 26 hours. In August that year, the two met in person in Ordos and walked together into the forest that now stands there.
For more than four decades, Yin Yuzhen and her husband have remained committed to the Maowusu, bringing a total of 70,000 mu (about 4,667 hectares) of barren sand under control. The shifting dunes that once rolled with yellow dust have gradually become woodland and pasture. Today, 85 percent of the Maowusu Sandy Land in Uxin Banner has been treated, and the transformation of this sandy expanse is regarded as a model case in reversing land degradation worldwide. Over the years, the area has continued to attract volunteers from many countries to take part in desertification control, and people-to-people cooperation on environmental protection has continued to grow.
The goodwill that began with sand control has long gone beyond a single stretch of sandy land. On October 15 this year, Yin Yuzhen was named one of the inaugural "100 Women Heroes in Agrifood Systems and Rural Development" at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome. There she joined Sakolsky and FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu in planting a crape myrtle as a symbol of friendship, sharing China's experience in desertification control on the international stage. Windblown sand respects no borders, and a shared commitment to ecological conservation has carried the story of two ordinary people out of the desert and onto the international multilateral platform.
The thread of people-to-people friendship clearly runs from the saplings in the Maowusu to the crape myrtle as a mark of friendship in Rome, and now to the conversation in Beijing about exchanges among young people. Sakolsky's plan to establish the foundation is meant to carry forward the goodwill that began in the desert: starting from an ecological commitment, using educational exchange as a bond, and helping more young people build connections and pass on the power of goodness and beauty. The story was shared via Media OutReach Newswire.
