致命魔术
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 | 10月16日，由中国木材保护工业协会、辽宁省工商业联合会主办的第三届中国运动地板大会暨抚顺市木地板产业链高质量发展推进会在抚顺友谊宾馆隆重举行。
"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."
。大会主题是强链补链、共建共享，旨在加快运动地板产业链配套完善，推进资源整合，推动运动地板产业高质量发展。中国木材保护工业协会会长刘能文、抚顺市委书记高键出席会议。 抚顺是中国木制品加工业的重要基地，拥有深厚的产业基础和较为成熟的产业园区，具有较强的产业创新和技术人才优势。
二 | 抚顺运动木地板产业特别是板材加工业，起步于二十世纪90年代，经历三十多年的发展，已经成为抚顺市工业的特色产业、优势产业。
三 | 目前，抚顺市拥有约180家运动木地板生产企业，占国内该行业从业企业数量的60%；规模以上运动地板等木材加工企业20家，年产销达600万平方米，市场占有率60%以上。2023年，抚顺荣获“中国运动地板产业基地”称号，成为国内唯一获此殊荣的城市。 会议期间，抚顺县和新宾满族自治县分别进行园区推介，充分依托产业优势、资源禀赋，推动招商引资。主旨演讲环节，各地运动地板领域的专家学者围绕运动地板新材料、新技术、品牌方向、国际供应等方面作精彩报告和交流研讨。
四 | 颁奖仪式环节，举办了运动地板等级评价企业以及运动地板优秀示范项目工程授证仪式，东体运动、恒丰益、森玛体育、兴利体育、瑞沣运动、新林、沈氏体育等7家我市优秀企业选送的9项运动地板工程项目获奖，其中银奖2项，优秀奖7项。 此次会议的成功举办，彰显了抚顺“中国运动地板产业基地”品牌优势，为推动抚顺运动木地板产业进一步发挥优势，集聚了更多的智慧，结出了累累硕果。
五 | 运动木地板产业链加工企业代表们纷纷表示，今后要在强化科技创新、稳固产业发展基础，推动形成产业集群、做大做强区域品牌，加强企业间合作、构建利益共同体等方面蓄势发力，全面提升企业的生产能力、品牌优势和质量水平。 会议还举行签约仪式，中国木材保护工业协会与中国建博会（广州）签订战略合作协议，抚顺市运动木地板协会与俄罗斯西比利斯木业公司签订木材贸易战略合作协议，抚顺县人民政府与四川惠众木制品有限公司签订整装家具项目意向合作协议，抚顺锦标木业有限公司与广东荣豪装备科技有限公司签订设备采购协议。 工业和信息化部原材料司副司长吕桂新、国家体育总局主任卢晓梅、辽宁省工商业联合会党组成员周福辉、副市长王金华出席。副市长王进致欢迎辞。 责任编辑：刘春阳。
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