我的团长我的团
$5,000 grew into a forest: American donor returns to China to reunite with desert reclamation partner_我的网站
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At 2:48 am on early Sunday morning, after a flight of more than 10 hours, Ronald Sakolsky arrived at Beijing Capital International Airport. As he stepped into the arrivals hall, he greeted the waiting reporters with earnest Putonghua "Wo hui lai le," meaning "I'm back."
The thrill of his homecoming had washed over him most vividly during the final moments of his flight. "When I saw the lights in Beijing as we were landing is when I realized that I am back in my second home."
Sakolsky, an American retired teacher from Pennsylvania, is visiting China from Sunday to September 1 for a journey that will take him to Beijing, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Central China's Henan Province. It is a reunion nearly three decades in the making.
That reunion began with a single act of generosity. In 1999, when Sakolsky arrived in China as a participant in a bilateral teacher exchange program, he was moved by Yin Yuzhen and her husband's tireless efforts to curb desertification in the Mu Us Desert in Inner Mongolia. He raised $5,000 to fund their local tree-planting initiative. The young saplings bought with the donation have since matured into more than 50,000 full-grown trees, transforming the once desolate, sandy wasteland into a thriving green landscape.
After decades of lost contact, Yin, a national model worker renowned for her desert restoration achievements, launched an online search for her American benefactor in May, hoping to reconnect with the man who helped launch her lifelong desert reclamation mission.
What followed was a remarkable wave of online support: within less than 48 hours, a nationwide search had tracked Sakolsky down. That swift effort led to their long-awaited virtual reunion, a video call that brought them face to face for the first time in 27 years.
Asked what he is most looking forward to about this journey, Sakolsky told the Global Times that "I want to see Ms Yin, see the forests, see the students I have not seen for almost 30 years, my colleagues. I want to see the Chinese people."
The trip itself felt like a dream he never thought would come true, he added.
Now, the dream is about to come true. Later on Sunday, Sakolsky will fly to Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the site of the transformative environmental project that bound his fate with Yin's all those years ago.
During his China visit, Sakolsky will join Yin in a new tree-planting activity. He will also hold exchanges and discussions with teachers and students from the Luoyang No.2 Foreign Language School where he once taught, and participate in official China-US teacher exchange events, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
As he prepares to see the transformed landscape with his own eyes, Sakolsky shared with the Global Times about how much China itself has changed over the past two decades. From photographs, he said, he had already seen the barren desert he remembered turn into lush green forests; he had also heard that Luoyang has become far more vibrant and beautiful.
"Hopefully the message gets out to the world that Chinese and Americans can work together and make a peaceful world," he said.
。 United Nations, Oct 14 (UNI) UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he will soon launch a plan for universal early-warning coverage for climate disasters.
In a video message for the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, Guterres on Thursday said climate disasters are hurting countries and economies like never before. Ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions are supercharging extreme weather events across the planet.
Yet, the world is failing to invest in protecting the lives and livelihoods of those on the front line. Those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis are paying the highest price. Entire populations are being blindsided by cascading climate disasters without any means of prior alert, he said.
"People need adequate warning to prepare for extreme weather events. That is why I am calling for universal early-warning coverage in the next five years," he said.
Guterres said early-warning systems and the ability to act on them are proven life-savers, noting that he will launch an action plan to provide early-warning systems for all within five years at the UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt next month.
He urged governments, international financial institutions and civil society to support such systems.
"On this International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, I call on all countries to invest in early-warning systems and support those who lack capacity. Extreme weather events will happen. But they do not need to become deadly disasters," said Guterres.
UNI/XINHUA PRT。
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