See You Again in China | From $5,000 to 50,000 trees: A friendship across the Pacific

On Aug. 23, 2026, at Ejin Horo Airport in Ordos, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Yin Yuzhen was reunited with her American friend Ronald Sakolsky after 26 years apart. Tears filled their eyes as they embraced.

In 1999, Sakolsky, then teaching in China, raised $5,000 through a foundation to support Yin's tree-planting efforts. The funds helped purchase seedlings that have since grown into a forest of more than 50,000 trees in Maowusu Sandy Land. From Plum, a suburb east of Pittsburgh, to the sandy lands of northern China, their friendship has crossed the Pacific and endured the years.

When they first met 26 years ago, Yin lived in a simple dwelling half-buried by sand. With the funds, she bought seedlings and carried them into the dunes bundle by bundle. Today, her new courtyard yields melons, vegetables and other produce grown from the once-sandy land. Poplars, Chinese pines, Mongolian Scotch pines and desert willows now stand where barren dunes once stretched. Sakolsky saw firsthand how a landscape he had once known as sand had become green.

The two bent down together to set a new sapling in the soil. Over 26 years, the land has turned green and a friendship has taken root with it. Their reunion is a reminder that even a small act of goodwill can travel far. As Sakolsky said, "More people need to do more for China and America. Even a small amount can become a forest."