Yin Yuzhen and the Work of Restoration

By Austin Little

An American teacher helped raise money for saplings. A Chinese farmer and her family spent decades caring for the land. Their reunion offers a way to think about generosity, ecological repair, and the work that continues after a good story ends.

AI disclosure. This page was drafted with AI assistance and edited for Apiary. Facts that need a live check are linked to their sources.

A reunion with a longer history

On August 23, 2026, Yin Yuzhen and Ronald Sakolsky met again at Ordos Ejin Horo International Airport in Inner Mongolia. Xinhua's photographs recorded the reunion: the Chinese woman whose work had become associated with restoring sandy land, and the American teacher who had helped support that work more than a quarter of a century earlier. The next day, according to a report published by China's National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Sakolsky returned to the planting area and the two planted another tree. 1,2

The story traveled easily. An American had helped provide $5,000. A Chinese farmer had used the assistance to buy saplings. Decades later, he returned to see what had grown. The numbers were memorable, the reunion moving, and the transformation apparently visible enough to fit into a photograph.

Yet the most consequential part of the story lies between the transfer of money and the return visit. It is the time during which the donor was absent and the work continued. A gift could help make planting possible. Keeping plants alive, learning from failures, and finding a workable relationship with a difficult landscape demanded something much harder to compress into a caption.

There are also small corrections that change the meaning. Sakolsky's fundraising began in 1999; he first met Yin in 2000. The 2026 reunion came 27 years after the fundraising effort and 26 years after that meeting. Detailed reporting describes him securing support from a Boston charity, rather than establishing that the entire sum came from his personal savings. Those distinctions make the account more interesting. This was an act of connection as well as generosity. 3

Yin's effort was already underway before either the money or the international attention arrived. Treating the gift as the beginning would erase the experience that made the support useful. Treating the resulting trees as a finished achievement would erase the maintenance that made the reunion possible.

The fuller story deserves both admiration and scrutiny. It asks us to notice a woman's practical knowledge without turning her into a miracle worker, to recognize a useful contribution without inventing a foreign savior, and to appreciate environmental improvement without assuming that every green landscape is ecologically healthy. None of those obligations diminishes the reunion. They give it somewhere firmer to stand.

Before the American teacher

An older profile maintained by PeaceWomen Across the Globe places Yin's move to Jingbeitang, in the Mu Us region of Inner Mongolia, in 1985, following her marriage. It describes early attempts that failed: irrigation ditches damaged by windblown sand, plantings that did not survive, and repeated adjustments to methods. The profile also records her search for advice and the involvement of her husband. Long before the viral reunion, her work was understood as a process of learning through difficult conditions. 4

The place has several English names. Mu Us Sandy Land and Maowusu refer to the same broad region; popular accounts often call it a desert. Yin's work is associated with Uxin Banner, an administrative area in Ordos. Getting those names right helps keep an individual restoration effort from expanding, through loose retelling, into a claim about all of northern China.

Early tree counts vary substantially across profiles. That is a reason to resist stitching them together into a single cinematic origin scene. A local government account published in 2024 describes a small initial planting, substantial losses, and subsequent purchases. A CCTV account published in 2018 offers a different starting number and survival tally. Both portray repeated failure and persistence, but their figures should not be treated as matching records of a single planting. 5,6

The broad lesson survives the uncertainty. Planting was experimental work, and survival mattered more than intention. A person could put a living thing into the ground and still have little control over what happened next. Wind, water, season, species, and the condition of the site would decide whether the effort endured.

This is where the familiar language of determination becomes inadequate. Determination explains why someone returns after a setback. It does not explain what that person changes on returning. Persistence can be wasteful when it repeats a failed technique unchanged. The more useful quality is persistence that remains attentive: noticing where protection holds, where plants struggle, and where a different approach is needed.

That distinction changes how we recognize expertise. A farmer's knowledge can reside in decisions made across years rather than in a published paper. It can be practical, comparative, and deeply specific to a place. Such knowledge still benefits from testing, documentation, and outside advice. Respecting it does not require claiming that experience is infallible. It requires giving experience a serious place in the conversation.

By the time Sakolsky encountered Yin's story, he was seeing an effort with a history. The recipient brought the commitment, the site knowledge, and the willingness to continue. The money entered that existing relationship with the land. It did not create it.

What the money actually did

Xinhua interviewed Sakolsky at his home in Pennsylvania in 2026. Its account says he was teaching English in Luoyang when a television report about Yin moved him to seek help. Over roughly two months, he contacted organizations in the United States until a Boston charity agreed to provide a $5,000 grant. He then helped with the communications and paperwork needed to get the assistance to China. 3

That sequence gives the donation a different shape from the usual shorthand. The contribution included finding a willing institution and carrying an intention through administrative steps. Someone had to recognize an effort, explain it to other people, and keep going when an immediate answer did not arrive.

China Daily's account of their reconnection reports that Yin used most of the money for saplings and kept one dollar as a souvenir. It also describes former students and colleagues helping the two reconnect after Yin's online appeal in May 2026. The account is a reminder that relationships around a project can become resources in their own right. A teacher's former professional community helped an old connection become active again. 7

Reports associate the assistance with about 50,000 trees. The forestry administration's account refers to more than 50,000 trees in the planting area associated with Sakolsky. That figure should remain attached to the reporting that supplies it. It is not a publicly demonstrated survival audit of every seedling purchased, nor an accounting of every later expense. 2

The tempting calculation is to divide $5,000 by 50,000 and announce that a mature tree cost ten cents. That would confuse a contribution toward planting material with the full cost of restoration. It would leave out subsequent labor, replacement planting, protection, access, and any other resources that supported survival. A meaningful cost estimate would need records covering those inputs and a clear definition of the result being purchased.

This matters beyond one donor. Public appeals often promise an easily understood unit: a tree, a hectare, a meal, a well. A unit can make participation possible. It can also create an illusion of completion. Once the promised object exists, the donor may imagine the responsibility has been discharged, even though the most important obligations have just begun.

The reunion offers a better model of attention. It invites a person to return, to look, and to learn what happened after the initial act. That return need not mean taking ownership of someone else's achievement. It can mean accepting the limits of one's contribution while remaining interested in the people who made it matter.

The scale of a life of work

The 50,000-tree story represents one part of a much larger undertaking. On October 15, 2026, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization named Yin the final honoree in its group of 100 Women Heroes in Agrifood Systems and Rural Development. FAO credited her work with contributing to the restoration of nearly 5,000 hectares around her home and the planting of more than eight million trees across the area. 8

FAO's wording matters. Trees planted across an area are not automatically trees alive today, and an area associated with restoration is not necessarily continuous closed forest. The recognition establishes the scale of the contribution as the organization describes it. It should not be enlarged into a claim that Yin single-handedly converted the entire Mu Us region into forest.

An Ordos account published in 2024 reported 70,000 mu of sandy area brought under control and described the establishment of a sand-control and afforestation company in 2005. It also reported farming activities involving crops and livestock. Seventy thousand mu is approximately 4,667 hectares, broadly consistent with FAO's later rounded area. The measurements belong to different accounts, however, and should not be presented as independently replicated ecological surveys. 5

An individual biography becomes misleading when every improvement nearby is credited to its central character. A landscape contains other workers, households, public investments, land uses, and environmental changes. An accurate account can recognize leadership while leaving room for that wider field of effort.

There is a similar problem with the word single-handedly. It offers a powerful image and a poor description of work involving a spouse, family, helpers, donors, technical advice, or public support. A person's initiative can be decisive without being solitary. Indeed, the capacity to bring other people into sustained work may be among the strongest signs of leadership.

The difference between planting totals and living systems is equally important. Counting is necessary, but the chosen count directs attention. A planting total rewards activity. A survival measure asks what endured. A biodiversity measure asks what kinds of life have room to exist. A water assessment asks whether the vegetation can remain without creating an unsustainable demand elsewhere.

None is a complete substitute for the others. A project could perform well on one measure and poorly on another. That is why the most respectful description of Yin's achievement is specific about what is reported, careful about what has not been demonstrated, and interested in how the work can continue. Precision protects the achievement from the exaggerated claims that could eventually undermine it.

What restoration means in a sandy landscape

The word desert can make ecological repair sound simpler than it is. It suggests an empty place waiting for trees, as though bare-looking land were a failed forest. Natural drylands support distinctive species and important soil processes, as IUCN explains; global biodiversity research also documents gaps in their protection. Their value cannot be determined by how closely they resemble wetter landscapes. 9,10

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification defines desertification as land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry subhumid areas, arising from factors including climatic variations and human activities. That definition concerns degradation. It does not make the existence of a naturally dry ecosystem a problem that must be corrected. 11

This distinction is essential to reading the Mu Us story. A useful intervention can stabilize damaging sand movement, restore vegetation lost through degradation, protect a settlement, or improve conditions for farming. Those purposes need to be identified. The phrase turning desert into forest, used without qualification, obscures the question of what ecological condition is appropriate in a particular place.

The Society for Ecological Restoration's international standards describe restoration as assisting the recovery of degraded native ecosystems. The 2026 edition emphasizes reference ecosystems, measurable recovery, the use of different kinds of knowledge, and attention to people affected by the work. It also recognizes that recovery takes place under changing environmental conditions. 12

That approach begins with questions rather than a preferred photograph. What lived here? What has been damaged? Which pressures remain? What can this site sustain now, and under likely future conditions? A planting design should follow those answers. Choosing the desired visual result first can reverse the logic.

For a public audience, this can sound like an unnecessary complication. Green is easy to celebrate. Reference conditions, hydrology, and plant communities are harder to summarize. Yet these details are where the difference between an attractive intervention and a lasting one can emerge.

A sparse landscape can be functioning well. A dense stand can be under stress. An agricultural improvement can be valuable without constituting full recovery of a native ecosystem. Useful language makes room for all three possibilities. It allows restoration, rehabilitation, shelterbelts, and productive land management to be discussed according to their actual purposes instead of forcing every improvement into the same category.

For Yin's story, the practical result is a more grounded form of praise. Her work concerns a particular inhabited landscape and the conditions that made life there difficult. It does not need to serve as proof that every desert should disappear. Its significance rests on what people have accomplished in that place, and on how carefully the results are understood.

A landscape bigger than one biography

The Mu Us region has a history that cannot be reduced to either human damage or natural adversity alone. A 2016 study in Scientific Reports describes an arid to semi-arid setting with roughly 200 to 400 millimeters of annual precipitation and native steppe vegetation. Its analysis of a sediment record in eastern Mu Us linked two ancient episodes of rapid desertification to intensified human-associated burning in an already vulnerable environment. The study offers evidence about particular historical processes, rather than a single explanation for every part of the region. 13

That mixed history helps explain why the right goal cannot be assumed from the word desert. Some changes can be reversed by reducing pressure or assisting vegetation recovery. Others reflect climatic limits that a planting campaign cannot simply overrule. Knowing which situation applies requires looking closely at the site.

Modern regional recovery is supported by research beyond the reunion coverage. A study published in the Journal of Environmental Management in 2025 used remote sensing to examine change between 1986 and 2020. Its classification estimated a 69.45 percent reduction in desertified land within the study area, alongside increased vegetation cover. This is evidence of substantial change in a defined land category. It does not mean that nearly seven-tenths of a natural desert became forest. 14

A separate study of vegetation dynamics from 1982 to 2014 found upward vegetation trends across 53.46 percent of its study area and a positive role for ecological interventions. The different percentage is not necessarily a contradiction: the studies used different periods and measured different things. A vegetation index tracks properties of the land surface. It cannot, by itself, tell a reader how many trees survived or whether an ecosystem's species composition has recovered. 15

Attribution is another layer of the work. A 2025 study examining 2002 to 2021 estimated that human activities accounted for about 70 percent of vegetation-index change, with climate accounting for roughly 30 percent. Those are model-dependent estimates for the period and region studied. They support a role for both management and climate; they cannot be used to assign a percentage of the regional recovery to Yin. 16

There is also a larger policy history. China's Three-North Shelterbelt Program began in 1978 and is scheduled to run through 2050. A United Nations partnership entry submitted by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes its scope across northern China. The entry is useful for program history, but its presence on a UN website does not turn the submitted account into an independent impact evaluation. 17

Together, these sources place the biography inside a larger landscape of activity. An individual can initiate, demonstrate, teach, and inspire. Regional change also reflects many people working under particular economic, policy, and climatic conditions. The challenge is to connect these scales without collapsing them.

Doing so strengthens the human story. Yin's significance need not depend on the implausible idea that one household achieved a regional transformation alone. It can rest on a more credible proposition: sustained local work can form a consequential part of a much larger recovery, and a visible practitioner can help make that recovery intelligible to people far away.

The water that green photographs cannot show

Every tree participates in a water balance. Water entering the ground can support vegetation, evaporate, move through plants into the atmosphere, or travel farther through the soil. Changing vegetation changes those pathways. A greener surface therefore raises a question that its color cannot answer: what has happened to the water available to the rest of the system?

A Mu Us study published in 2020 examined sixteen soil profiles across bare-sand comparison sites and sites revegetated roughly three decades earlier. The researchers estimated potential groundwater recharge beneath plantations to be between 33 percent and more than 90 percent lower than beneath adjacent bare sand, with differences associated with vegetation type and density. This estimate concerns water passing below roots, rather than water measured reaching an aquifer. The finding is not a measurement of Yin's plots. 18

The result is a warning against assuming that more vegetation is hydrologically free. It is not, by itself, a verdict against restoration. Stabilizing sand and supporting livelihoods can provide real benefits while also changing recharge. Responsible management needs to understand the tradeoff, rather than declaring that one benefit makes every cost irrelevant.

Regional water accounts introduce further complexity. A 2024 analysis of the Mu Us Sandyland assessed agriculture, coal mining, and ecological restoration together. It found declining terrestrial and groundwater storage and identified increased agricultural and industrial water consumption as major contributors. The presence of more trees does not make trees the automatic explanation for every decline in regional water availability. Other uses must be examined. 19

A newer study in the 2026 volume of Communications Earth and Environment reconstructed regional water storage from 1987 to 2020. It identified depletion during 2003 to 2010 followed by recovery during 2011 to 2020, and proposed a contribution from vegetation-related atmospheric feedback that increased precipitation. This is a regional inference from satellite and modeling work. It does not establish that any individual plantation produces enough rain to replace the water it uses. 20

Differences in scale, time period, and methods help explain why these findings need not agree, although they do not resolve every difference between the studies. Water moving below a local plantation is not the same measurement as total water stored across a region. A regional balance can also change through processes operating far beyond the boundary of a particular stand.

For the reader, the appropriate conclusion is measured. There is evidence of recovery and evidence of water-related limits. Neither justifies a universal claim that trees always replenish water or always deplete it. The relevant questions concern the location, the species, the planting density, the source of water, competing uses, and the period being assessed.

That uncertainty should shape the work rather than halt it. Monitoring can help identify when an intervention requires adjustment. Choosing vegetation suited to local conditions can matter more than maximizing the number planted. Where natural regeneration or grassland recovery meets the purpose, a dense tree stand may be unnecessary.

UNCCD's Global Land Outlook report on rangelands explicitly cautions against converting rangelands into forests or plantations unless local ecological, historical, and socioeconomic conditions justify the change. It is global guidance, not an assessment of Yin's planting choices, but it provides an essential boundary around the enthusiasm her story generates. 21

The most useful response to a green photograph is therefore curiosity about what lies beneath it. How is the soil functioning? What happens during a dry sequence of years? What vegetation persists without excessive intervention? A lasting achievement should be able to welcome those questions. They are part of caring for the result.

The labor after planting day

There is a moment in almost every planting story when a person presses soil around a seedling and the photograph is taken. It is a useful image because the action is visible. A future is being proposed. The harder photograph would show the many ordinary visits required afterward, without knowing which visit will prove decisive.

An Associated Press report in July 2026, based partly on a government-organized media tour, described Yin and her husband continuing to tend trees and repair sand-control checkerboards, with assistance from their children and occasional volunteers. That detail is more revealing than a celebratory tree total. The work remained an ongoing practice after decades of recognition. 22

FAO's dryland restoration guidelines likewise describe a range of activities extending well beyond planting: protection of habitat, assisted natural regeneration, dune stabilization, appropriate policy, financial support, and continuous learning. The guidelines emphasize adapting action to local conditions and connecting ecological resilience with livelihoods. 23

The implication for donors is straightforward. Maintenance needs to be visible in the budget and legitimate in the story. If funding pays only for a beginning, the people closest to the site may inherit an obligation that outsiders have not acknowledged. A project can look inexpensive precisely because somebody else's time has been omitted from the calculation.

Recognition can create a similar distortion. A community may celebrate the person who endured exceptional hardship while leaving the underlying hardship unchanged. The applause becomes a substitute for asking whether necessary work could be made safer, better supported, and less exhausting.

Yin's persistence deserves respect. Respect does not require presenting exhaustion as the ideal operating model for environmental repair. A durable project should be able to survive illness, aging, a poor season, or a change in household responsibilities. If success depends entirely on one person's refusal to stop, the next question is how to support continuity without demanding that the same person carry everything indefinitely.

This is not a demand that every small undertaking become a large institution. It is a question of proportion. Shared records, skills passed to another person, realistic maintenance funds, and a clear understanding of who can make decisions may matter as much as an ambitious expansion target. The best next step can be consolidation.

The long interval before Sakolsky's return makes this otherwise unremarkable work visible. Twenty-six years is long enough for a modest intervention to become consequential, and long enough for poorly supported interventions to fail. What the reunion honors is not only an old act of kindness. It honors the fact that someone continued to care for what that kindness helped begin.

Livelihoods belong inside the story

It is tempting to imagine ecological care as work performed outside ordinary economic life. The farmer becomes a guardian of nature who needs little except conviction. That portrait can be flattering and unfair. People restoring land still need food, income, secure access to resources, and time for the other demands of a household.

The reports of farming, a business, and later tourism ambitions around Yin's work complicate the image of an isolated tree planter. They suggest an effort connected to livelihood as well as environmental improvement. A CCTV profile described plans to combine agriculture, visitor facilities, and education about sand control. Those were reported development plans, not an independent assessment of profitability or ecological effects. 6

The connection raises useful questions. Can improved land support an income without exhausting water or undermining the vegetation that protects it? Who receives the benefits? Who bears the cost when a season is poor? Does a commercial activity help fund long-term care, or does it introduce pressure for a more intensive use of the site?

There is no responsible answer that can be inferred from a photograph. A farm, a visitor business, and a conservation project each bring different demands. Their coexistence may be productive, but it needs management. Calling everything green does not resolve the tradeoffs.

Land tenure belongs in that discussion. UNCCD emphasizes that secure rights affect people's ability and incentive to invest in sustainable land management. Its work on women's land rights also highlights the importance of access to resources and meaningful participation in decisions. These are general concerns in restoration policy; they do not establish a specific legal problem on Yin's land. 24,25

The relevance is structural. Asking people to invest years in a place requires attention to their position in that place. A promise of future ecological benefit offers limited reassurance if the person doing the work cannot reasonably expect to share in it or influence what happens next.

For women, recognition should extend beyond admiration for sacrifice. A public award can acknowledge expertise and open doors. Whether recognition produces lasting opportunity depends on decisions about resources, authority, and whose knowledge is taken seriously after the ceremony.

Yin's FAO honor makes those questions especially timely. Her story can encourage other women without suggesting that they must replicate the same hardships to be considered worthy. The useful invitation is to take their competence seriously and remove avoidable barriers. Heroism should not become a qualification for receiving ordinary support.

A friendship without a rescue narrative

The cross-border element gives the reunion much of its emotional power. An American teacher recognized the value of a Chinese woman's work and helped connect it to resources. Decades later, she wanted him to see the result. The account allows generosity and gratitude to coexist with the recipient's authority over her own achievement.

There is a delicate balance here. Overemphasize the money and the local practitioner becomes the person who received help. Omit the money and a meaningful act of solidarity disappears. The more accurate story gives each contribution its proper scale and leaves room for the many other contributions that cannot be captured in a two-person portrait.

The same care is needed when describing national identity. The friendship can be meaningful without being asked to settle every disagreement between two countries. Individuals can act decently toward one another while governments remain in conflict, and a personal encounter does not erase the institutions that shape larger relationships.

Chinese official reporting has presented the reunion as an example of people-to-people friendship. That framing is part of the story's public life. It tells readers something about why the account has been promoted. It does not, on its own, tell them whether every underlying detail is true or false. 7

The distinction is useful whenever a human story arrives through a powerful institution. Emotional authenticity and institutional usefulness can exist at the same time. A reunion can be moving and politically valuable. A restoration effort can be real and selectively described. Evaluating the evidence requires more than choosing between credulity and automatic rejection.

Here, the appropriate response is to keep asking specific questions. Which details come from direct interviews? Which are visible in dated photographs? Which are supplied by official accounts? Which ecological conclusions are supported by research, and at what scale? These questions help preserve the human story while limiting the claims made in its name.

They also protect the people involved from becoming symbols too large for any person to inhabit. Yin need not stand for the flawless success of every tree-planting program. Sakolsky need not stand for the intentions of an entire country. Their actual connection is substantial enough to deserve attention on its own terms.

The most transferable part may be modest: take another person's work seriously, find a useful way to support it, and remain willing to learn from what follows. That is an ethic of participation rather than possession. It can cross a border without pretending the border, or the differences across it, has ceased to exist.

What a better restoration story would count

A reunion is an occasion to look backward. It can also improve the questions asked about the future. The public deserves a language for restoration that makes care, uncertainty, and shared responsibility understandable without draining every story of hope.

The first question is whether the intervention has achieved its stated purpose. If the aim is to reduce damaging sand movement near homes, measure that. If the aim is native habitat recovery, examine the living community. If the aim includes reliable agricultural production, follow the conditions that make production possible. A project should not quietly change its definition of success to match whichever result looks best.

The second question concerns endurance. Survival after planting deserves attention, but so does performance through dry years and other stresses. A successful season is encouraging evidence. It is a different kind of evidence from a record showing that a system remains functional when conditions become difficult.

The third concerns costs that are easy to leave outside the frame. Water, labor, displaced uses, and the demands of maintenance belong in the account. So do benefits that an aerial image may miss, including a more reliable living environment or the recovery of a locally valued species. An honest assessment needs room for both.

The fourth question asks who gets to answer. FAO's work on inclusive restoration monitoring emphasizes that monitoring can overlook inequalities and fail to recognize contributions when social realities are excluded. People working at a site should have more than a ceremonial role in describing its condition and deciding what comes next. 26

These questions need not create an expensive bureaucracy around every small project. They can guide proportionate, practical records. A simple baseline, consistent observations, an explanation of methods, and openness about setbacks can be more useful than an elaborate success story that cannot be checked.

Nor should uncertainty become an excuse for paralysis. Ecological work often begins before every variable is known. The responsible response is to make uncertainties visible, choose interventions that can be revised, and learn as evidence accumulates. The alternative is not perfect knowledge. It is action without an honest way to discover whether the action helped.

For an admirer deciding how to contribute, this changes the invitation. Ask what is needed now, rather than assuming another planting day is the answer. Help can support monitoring, maintenance, local training, or the repair of an existing system. Sometimes the most valuable contribution will produce no dramatic before-and-after photograph at all.

Returning to the people who stayed

There is a reason the airport reunion reached people who might never read a restoration paper. It gave a long period of work a recognizable human form. Someone remembered help received many years earlier. Someone came back to see what had happened. The distance between those moments became briefly visible.

The temptation is to turn that distance into a miracle and leave it there. But miracle can be an evasive word when it removes the sequence of decisions, revisions, and ordinary effort that made an outcome possible. It can leave a reader feeling inspired while learning very little about what deserves support.

A more useful ending keeps the work in view. The financial contribution was limited. Its importance depended on the person and community receiving it. The planting effort was consequential. Its future depends on continued attention to the land, including the water and ecological conditions that a celebratory image cannot establish.

Holding these truths together allows a generous reading of the story without exaggeration. We can celebrate the reunion, credit the long undertaking, and remain exact about the evidence. We can honor local skill while welcoming scientific scrutiny. We can value a successful intervention without turning it into a universal instruction to plant trees everywhere.

The most demanding part of care is often its duration. Public attention gathers around beginnings and returns, while the work between them proceeds with less notice. Yin's story offers an opportunity to correct that imbalance. The years deserve as much attention as the dollar amount.

What came back to Sakolsky in 2026 was the chance to witness a contribution absorbed into a much longer life of work. What the wider public received was a reminder that useful generosity can begin at a distance, but ecological repair must become local, particular, and sustained. The people who stay with a place make that transformation possible.

Their work should remain visible after the reunion leaves the screen.

Sources

Numbered citations correspond to the sources below. Dates refer to publication unless otherwise indicated.

1. Xinhua. Photographic report of Yin Yuzhen and Ronald Sakolsky reuniting at Ordos Ejin Horo International Airport. 23 August 2026.

1. China Green Times via National Forestry and Grassland Administration. Report on Sakolsky and Yin visiting the planting area on 24 August. 28 August 2026.

1. Xinhua. From 5,000 USD to 50,000 trees: an American teacher and a Chinese woman's efforts to green a desert. 20 August 2026.

1. PeaceWomen Across the Globe. China: Yuzhen Yin. Undated biographical profile.

1. Ordos municipal information portal. Yin Yuzhen: Devoting 39 years to removing 70,000 mu of desert. 23 October 2024.

1. CCTV via China Story. Eco-tourism expert transforms desert landscape. 27 May 2018.

1. China Daily. Desert fighter reunites online with US friend. 26 May 2026.

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAO honours 100 Women Heroes driving change across agrifood systems. 15 October 2026.

1. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Drylands and land degradation. 2017.

1. Lewin et al., Nature Ecology and Evolution. Global evaluation of current and future threats to drylands and their vertebrate biodiversity. 2024.

1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Article 1: Use of terms. Treaty text.

1. Gann et al., Restoration Ecology. International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration, third edition. 2026.

1. Miao, Jin and Cui, Scientific Reports 6, 23003. Human activity accelerating the rapid desertification of the Mu Us Sandy Lands, North China. 2016.

1. Xu et al., Journal of Environmental Management 373, 123695. Monitoring and assessment of desertification reversal in ecologically fragile areas: A case study of the Mu Us Sandy Land. 2025.

1. Xiu et al., Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 190, 543. Monitoring the response of vegetation dynamics to ecological engineering in the Mu Us Sandy Land of China from 1982 to 2014. 2018.

1. Chao et al., Journal of Arid Land 17, 605–623. Dynamic evolution of the NDVI and driving factors in the Mu Us Sandy Land of China from 2002 to 2021. 2025.

1. UN Sustainable Development Goals partnerships database; submission by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Three-North Shelterbelt Program. Program record.

1. Huang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Impact of Afforestation on Atmospheric Recharge to Groundwater in a Semiarid Area. 2020.

1. Gao et al., Science of the Total Environment 929, 172513. Assessing the impact of agriculture, coal mining, and ecological restoration on water sustainability in the Mu Us Sandyland. 2024.

1. Zhou et al., Communications Earth and Environment 7, 80. Ecological restoration reverses terrestrial water storage losses in the Mu Us Sandyland in China. 2026.

1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Global Land Outlook thematic report on rangelands and pastoralists. 2024.

1. Associated Press. China's Green Great Wall tames desert growth, but scientists warn the fight is not over. 13 July 2026.

1. Food and Agriculture Organization; UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Global guidelines for the restoration of degraded forests and landscapes in drylands: Building resilience and benefiting livelihoods. 2015.

1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Land tenure. Overview.

1. United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Women's Land Rights. Policy resource.

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Making restoration monitoring more inclusive. 2026.