作者：陵龙
来源：原创
时间：2026-08-26
阅读：270833 次
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From 5,000 USD to 50,000 trees: an American teacher and a Chinese woman's efforts to green a desert_我的网站
一 |
"I knew you would come early and sit here until four o'clock and then knock on my door," Sakolsky told Xinhua reporters with a grin. "That's why I was outside." It was, he said, just the way he remembered Chinese people doing things.
His waiting outside was a small gesture of thoughtfulness, one that hinted at a friendship forged nearly three decades earlier between a veteran middle school world history teacher from Plum, a leafy suburb east of Pittsburgh, and a rural Chinese woman who devoted decades to holding back the shifting sands of the Mu Us Desert.
In 1999, while working as an English teacher in China, Sakolsky was moved to tears by a TV report about Yin Yuzhen, a rural Chinese woman who was trying to hold back the shifting sands of the Mu Us Desert in northern China by planting trees. He spent two months raising 5,000 U.S. dollars to help Yin, then a stranger.
Now 69, Sakolsky will return to China this month for his third visit, traveling from Beijing to Luoyang and finally to the Mu Us Desert. He looks forward to reuniting with Yin, giving her a big hug and planting another tree beside her, where shifting sands have given way to a forest roughly 50,000 trees strong.
"It's a miracle," he told Xinhua recently. "There's no other word than it's a miracle."
A JOURNEY HE NEVER PLANNED
Sakolsky's modest two-story home in Plum is not where one might expect an international story to begin. He bought it 32 years ago and raised his family there with Barbara, his wife of 46 years. They have four children and eight grandchildren.
High on one living room wall, "The Sakolskys," in large letters, crowns a display of framed family photos surrounding the words: "Family is where our story begins. Life takes us to unexpected places. Love brings us home."
Asked to sum up his worldview in three words, Sakolsky answered without hesitation: family, respect, kindness -- the values that have anchored his life.
"Family first," he said. "I'm a family man."
That makes what he did in 1999 all the more striking. In his forties, in a doctor's waiting room, he spotted a tiny magazine advertisement recruiting Americans to teach English in China. Without hesitation, he applied, flew to New York for an interview, and was offered the position.
His parents were stunned and came all the way from Florida to talk him out of it: He had four children and a stable teaching career. His oldest daughter was a high school senior, while his youngest son was entering elementary school. But his daughters supported him.
"My dad said, 'You're crazy. How are you going to go away for a year? You have four children, a wife and a house to take care of.' Then he looked at my girls and said to them, 'Are you going to let your dad go to China for that long?'"
"And my girls looked at their grandfather, and I'll never forget this. They said to him, "Whatever dad wants to do, we support him."
With his family's blessing, Sakolsky left for Beijing, then traveled by train to Luoyang three days later. When he arrived at about 9 p.m. that night, the platform was almost empty and dimly lit. For a moment, he felt uneasy until he spotted two Chinese teachers holding up a piece of cardboard with his name written across it.
Teaching at Luoyang Foreign Language School was only one part of Sakolsky's life in China. One of the earliest "lessons" he learned came from watching children kick an empty Coca-Cola bottle between two stones serving as goalposts.
At first, he was puzzled by how they could play without a real soccer ball. "Then I realized it didn't matter to them," Sakolsky said.
"They could play the game, laugh and have fun with a plastic bottle," he said. "So China taught me to appreciate the simple things in life. You don't have to have a lot of money, you don't have to have a big car and a fancy house, and you can still be happy. That was a big lesson that I learned right away."
Beyond the classroom, Sakolsky often volunteered at nearby schools and villages and traveled with Chinese colleagues during school holidays, sharing modest guesthouses, simple meals and long train rides.
Sakolsky told Xinhua such experiences helped him break the ice with his Chinese colleagues, who eventually treated him just like one of them. "That's what I wanted," he said.
Sakolsky also told Xinhua that shortly after he arrived in China, his hosts gave him a Chinese name, Long Fu, or "Happy Dragon."
"I like dragons," he said, laughing, "and I laugh a lot."
A MIRACLE HE NEVER IMAGINED
Every evening in Luoyang, Sakolsky watched a half-hour English news broadcast before heading downstairs to practice tai chi with elderly neighbors.
Then, on an autumn evening in 1999, a brief TV report caught his eye. On the screen was Yin, planting trees by hand with her husband to push back the advancing sands of the Mu Us Desert, he remembered.
The story stayed with him. "I was so touched in the heart, I started to cry," he recalled nearly 30 years later. "I honestly cannot tell you why. Something just happened to me. I just felt like I needed to help."
Over the next two months, Sakolsky spent his evenings contacting more than a dozen organizations across the United States, determined to help the woman he knew only from that five-minute broadcast. After a series of setbacks, a Boston-based charity agreed to provide a 5,000-U.S. dollar grant with no strings attached.
He then spent weeks helping coordinate the cross-border paperwork and communications. By the end of December, word finally came that the money had reached China and was on its way to Yin.
"I expected nothing," he said. "You don't give something expecting something in return. I wanted to thank China and help her make China more beautiful. That was all. I didn't need a thank-you or anything else."
He heard nothing more about the donation until the following May, when the school told him he needed to take a week off for a trip. When he asked his Chinese colleague, Bai Fan, and the New York-based coordinator of the exchange program where he was going, both gave the same reply: "I know, but I cannot tell you, you will cry."
He was flown to Hohhot, the regional capital. At dinner, as Sakolsky sat facing the door, it swung open, and in walked a woman in a pink jacket.
"That's the lady from television!" he recalled. "I jumped out of my seat, and I ran up to Ms. Yin and gave her a big hug."
The next morning, before an audience of about 500 people, Sakolsky was asked to give an impromptu speech. He remembers little of the 20-minute address except its core message: Americans and Chinese "must focus on our similarities and not on our differences," and can work together to plant a forest in the desert.
Afterward, they drove for four hours. "No roads, no timber, no houses," he recalled. "We were just driving over sand dunes in the desert."
When the vehicle finally stopped, there was nothing but sand stretching to the horizon. Then Yin emerged from a hollow in the dunes, where she had been digging for water to irrigate her young trees.
Yin showed him how to plant the trees, which he thought would grow only about knee-high to hold back the sand. "I never thought that it was going to be a 50,000-tree forest," he said. "Back then, I said this was impossible (turning this desert into a forest), but she did it, she and her helpers."
That night, Yin and her husband welcomed him into their home. Nearly three decades later, he still remembers the homemade noodles Yin cooked for him. "Delicious," he recalled softly.
Earlier this year, Yin launched an online search for the American teacher who had helped her plant the first trees. The story eventually reached Sakolsky, who was stunned to learn that the forest had grown to roughly 50,000 trees.
"Fifty thousand trees!" he exclaimed. "I cannot believe it."
Then came photos showing a building and a road where there had been nothing but sand in 1999. "When I go back, I will be amazed," he said. "It's a miracle. There's no other word for it."
Sakolsky insisted that Yin was the real hero. "I'm not the hero of this story," he said. "Ms. Yin is the hero. I just helped."
"Since she was a child, she always wanted to beautify China. It was a lifetime dream of hers, and she has accomplished her dream," he said.
A REUNION HE NEVER EXPECTED
For more than two decades, Sakolsky and Yin lost touch, but China never really left him. His home is filled with reminders of those years: a Year of the Dragon card, a calligraphy scroll, paintings of peonies and pandas, a wooden dragon made by his children, and even a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his first dinner in Luoyang, kept as reminders of Chinese hospitality, though he has never smoked.
Downstairs, in the basement, stands a nearly six-foot replica of a Terracotta Army general, a gift he received after returning to teach in Luoyang in 2004. It stood in his classroom for 17 years before he brought it home upon retiring. Now, he hopes his youngest son, also an educator, will one day give it a place in his own office.
Based on his experience in China, Sakolsky summed up his impression of the Chinese people in three words: respect, simplicity and patriotism. He called China's decades-long fight against desertification remarkable in terms of both scale and dedication.
"China also, with what Ms. Yin did with the forest, taught me how much love the Chinese have for their country," he said. "She was making like no money and still planting the trees. That's what got to my heart."
"The fact that Chinese people are willing to sacrifice and give back because they love their motherland is awesome," he added.
In June, while traveling in Australia, Sakolsky was recognized by a woman from Singapore who had seen a video about his story.
"She was like, 'Oh my god, there are millions of people who have watched this video!'" he recalled, still astonished.
"I'm just a simple teacher," he said. "I live a simple life ... I have four fantastic children and eight fabulous grandchildren, and that's what I love. I never thought anything like this was ever going to happen."
Sakolsky is set to travel to China for a trip late this week.
Asked what he wants to do first when he sees Yin again, he didn't hesitate: "Give her a big hug."
He also hopes they can plant trees side by side once more. For Sakolsky, the reunion holds great significance.
"We're all humans. We all love our families, we all love life, we all love the Earth. We all want peace," he said.
He suggested that everyone can work together to create a peaceful world. "It's not an easy thing, and not a quick thing. It will take time, but it can be done."
"(If) the goal is strong enough, and you don't quit every time you face an obstacle, (if) you keep going, (then) you'll reach the goal. That's what Ms. Yin did."
。 不久前，骑士官宣，球队正式签下前NBA球员、2015届的首轮五号秀海佐尼亚，随后没多久，骑士又宣布，海佐尼亚下赛季将身穿10号球衣。
二 | 重点来了，不知出于什么原因，近日，海佐尼亚又决定不穿10号球衣了，而是改穿33号球衣，这一操作也引起了不少球迷猜想。 骑士媒体人Zach Weiss这么写道： “海佐尼亚的第一段NBA生涯穿过3个不同号码，魔术23号，尼克斯8号，开拓者44号。有人预测过他会在骑士穿44号，随后有关10号的公告发布了，但紧接着在今天清晨，关于换掉10号的新闻又传来了。
三 | ” “通常情况下，当这种新闻出现时，往往是因为有另一名球员加盟而且想要同样的号码，至于这与德玛尔德罗赞有什么联系，其实非常简单。在此前效力过的4支球队中，10号球衣他穿了3次，只有在公牛穿了11号。” “这是否意味着海佐尼亚正在为了给那位中距离之王腾出号码？德罗赞拥有一个非常令人印象深刻的职业生涯，6次入选全明星阵容，而且目前在历史总得分榜上排名前20。” 需要说的是，这不是德罗赞第一次与骑士挂上钩，早在詹姆斯加盟76人之前，就曾有多个消息称，德罗赞是詹姆斯的“备选方案”，如果骑士没有追到詹姆斯的话，他们就会签下德罗赞。 在詹姆斯加盟76人之后，名记Shams也这么报道过：骑士对德罗赞（还有库明加）颇有兴趣，有意将其招至麾下。 有一说一，骑士10号突然空出来确实让人浮想联翩，那么现在的德罗赞到底什么水平？他适合目前的骑士吗？ 拿上赛季来说，德罗赞一共为国王出战了77场比赛，场均上场31分钟，得到18.4分2.9篮板4.1助攻，三项命中率49.7%/32.0%/86.8%，真实命中率59.4%。
四 | 尽管休赛期遭遇国王裁员（下赛季只有1000万受保障），但毫无疑问的一点是，现在的德罗赞依然是一个颇有进攻威胁的球员。
五 | 即便在37岁的年纪，德罗赞依然拥有出色的进攻技巧，他的中距离能力尤其出色，可以在比赛胶着时持球终结——只要给球权，德罗赞就能交出漂亮数据，今年3月曾单场41分11助攻就是最大证明。 但，德罗赞的问题也有，这其中不少都不太适合现在的骑士： ——没有三分，这是德罗赞的老问题了，如果加盟骑士的话，他无法为哈登、米切尔拉开空间，如果与莫布利、贾莱特阿伦同场的话，场上空间将会非常灾难 ——打法需要球权，德罗赞的持球能力不错，但他并不是一个无球能力出色的球员，这也导致了他如今无法担任很多配角角色 ——防守问题，这也是德罗赞的老问题，拿上赛季来说，德罗赞场均干扰对手9.3次出手，对手投篮命中率提升4.4% 目前的骑士其实并不缺少持球进攻，哈登、米切尔、莫布利甚至施罗德（还没有被交易）都能持球打，相反的，他们更需要防守型侧翼，而德罗赞显然不是一个最优秀的选择。 德罗赞是否愿意打替补也是个问题，传言他之所以被国王裁掉，一部分原因也是他不愿意接受替补角色，而在骑士，他肯定无法与米切尔、哈登共同首发，否则防守将会非常灾难。 值得一提的一点，德罗赞和哈登是发小，两人从小一起长大，关系非常不错，结合这一层面，以及此次海佐尼亚“让出10号”，德罗赞加盟骑士的概率确实不小。 但适不适合就是另外的问题了，个人觉得，德罗赞绝非现在这支骑士的最优解——双方应该都有更好的选择，至于会不会真的联手，我们拭目以待吧。
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