Desert blooms from act of kindness

Fate intervenes

Sakolsky's journey to teach in China happened by chance.

He remembers sitting in a doctor's office back home when he opened a magazine just to "kill time". He saw a tiny advertisement asking for teachers from the United States to teach English listening and speaking in China.

"Something hit me," he said. "I can't tell you why. But I answered the advertisement."

After an interview in New York, he was selected as one of 14 Americans to teach in China for a year. Before embarking on his teaching trip, he was eager to see Beijing, the Great Wall, the Yellow River and the Terracotta Warriors. But he experienced much more during his visit. "Going to China just enhanced my Chinese education beyond expectation," he said.

He believes a "miracle" led him to Yin.

Sakolsky had planned to teach in Chengdu, Sichuan province. However, another teacher took that position so he chose Luoyang instead.

When he arrived, he felt homesick, but remembered his two daughters' support before he embarked on his China journey. He kept busy by doing tai chi with locals and watching the news. There were two English-language half-hour CCTV news programs aired at noon and 7 pm back then.

"A reporter … from CCTV was doing a five-minute TV segment called Chinese Heroes and Heroines," he said.

He was struck by the story of Yin and her husband planting trees in Inner Mongolia. "At the time, I thought the trees were only going to be 2-feet (60 centimeters), maybe 3-feet high at the most to keep the sand down," he said.

He saw that Yin's husband had lung problems. She made just $250 a year and spent all their money on trees.

"I can't tell you why something hit me in the heart," he recalled. "I'd only been in China for two months, but I said, 'I need to help this lady. I need to do something.'"

He added: "China had already changed who I was, my personality, the way I looked at things. I had learned how to appreciate simple things … I wanted to help her, and at the same time thank China for what it had already done to me."

From October to December that year, he researched organizations in the US that might donate money for Yin's tree-planting mission. Finally, he found an institution in Boston, Massachusetts, willing to give the full $5,000.

After he received the donation, he spent two months cutting through red tape to get Yin the funds.

"You have to understand in 1999, there were no roads to Ms Yin's house, which I found out later. No roads! She had no telephone. They drove out to her," he said.

"Local officials brought her a generator and a telephone so that they could communicate with her … and then I lost contact. I knew in December that the money had made it to Beijing. And that's the last I heard."

In May 2000, Bai Fan, the vice-principal at the school where Sakolsky worked, took the American on a surprise visit to meet Yin in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

Bai had dreamed of visiting the grasslands and Sakolsky invited him along as a translator. "He had become not my boss anymore. He was my brother," he said.

Sakolsky met Yin at a banquet and fondly remembers feasting on an entire lamb — a Mongolian delicacy.

The next day he gave a speech to a big audience, including local officials, that was translated by Bai. They then drove for hours over sand dunes, Sakolsky recalled.

"We stopped in the middle of nowhere; all sand, no roads, no houses. We had passed the village about two hours before, and seen nothing but a hole in the sand. (Then) out of the hole came Ms Yin," he said.

She had been digging through the sand to hit the water table 2.4 meters down to irrigate the trees. Her only tools were a shovel and a yoke. She tied the saplings with hemp rope and carried them in bundles to be planted, Sakolsky said.

"I kept telling her what you're doing is miraculous, but it's impossible," he said. "Then she starts saying, 'this is going to be your forest'".

"I said to Bai Fan, 'why does she keep calling it my forest? It's not my forest. I didn't do this for it to be my forest.'

"And he said to me, 'The Chinese government is calling it the Sakolsky Forest'. I said, 'No, I don't want this. I don't want it called the Sakolsky forest'".

The group then drove 45 minutes to Yin's house and planted more trees. She cooked him a delicious noodle dish.