A cloud dialogue session at the 27th China Annual Conference & Expo for International Education (CACIE) in Beijing on October 30 brought together Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese anti-desertification pioneer, Bai Fan, head of the Luoyang No. 2 Foreign Language School Education Group, and their American friend Ronald Sakolsky, known as Sakolsky, via video link. The conversation added a new footnote to a cross-border green story now spanning 26 years, according to an announcement carried by Media OutReach Newswire.
During the link, Sakolsky said he had launched 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 responded with an observation that resonated with the audience: planting trees and nurturing people both come down to perseverance.
The friendship originated in the Maowusu Sandy Land. In 1999, Sakolsky, then teaching in Luoyang, was moved by Yin'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. In May 2026, Yin 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 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. 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 is regarded as a model case in reversing land degradation worldwide. 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.
On October 15 this year, Yin 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 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 from the desert onto the international multilateral platform.
The thread of people-to-people friendship runs from the saplings in the Maowusu to the crape myrtle in Rome and now to the Beijing conversation 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.
