我是谁

American teacher takes jar of sand as symbol of shared ground in forest he helped grow in China_我的网站

四大名捕

A |

Ronald Sakolsky fills a jar with sand from the Mu Us Desert in Inner Mongolia, planning to bring it back to the US, on August 24, 2026. Photo: Lin Xiaoyi
On Monday afternoon, Ronald Sakolsky, an American teacher, set foot once again on the soil of the Mu Us Desert, in the Uxin Banner of Ordos, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. He first came here in 2000. Back then, the land was little more than drifting sand. Today, it is green with trees – a transformation driven by decades of local effort.
He stood within Sakolsky Forest, a woodland formally named to honor his early donation toward local ecological restoration. There, he carried out a plan he had held long before this trip: filling a jar with sand from the desert to bring home to the US.
More than two decades ago, sand was the one thing this place had in abundance. In 1999, when Sakolsky arrived in China as a participant in a bilateral teacher exchange program, he was moved by the tireless efforts of Chinese desert fighter Yin Yuzhen and her husband to curb desertification in the Mu Us Desert. He raised $5,000 – equivalent in 1999 to three years of income for Yin’s entire family – to fund their local tree-planting initiative.
The young saplings bought with that donation have since matured into more than 50,000 full-grown trees, transforming the once desolate, sandy wasteland into a thriving green landscape.
When Sakolsky met Yin at the airport on Sunday, 26 years after his first visit to Inner Mongolia, he joked that he could not take a tree from the Mu Us Desert, but he could slip some sand into his shoes and carry a piece of the land back with him. Now, he had found exactly the sand he wanted – not just any sand, but from a place where persistence had turned desert into life, and where his own name had become part of that story.
“Promise is a promise,” he said. “Ms. Yin made a promise, and she fulfilled it.”
For Sakolsky, the sand is not just dirt. It is a metaphor, a bridge, a shared ground. He plans to tell his grandchildren what it means. “It’s not just a piece of sand in the jar,” he said. “It’s a jar of love.”
He used the jar of sand to symbolize that America and China share a relationship rooted in the same soil. He shook the jar, holding its two ends as if they were the two countries, and said that it shows we’re all on the same planet.
There is an old American joke, he noted, that if you dig a hole deep enough, you will eventually reach China. “We’re all on the same planet,” he said.
Earlier that day, while visiting Yin’s home, he spoke about the need for Americans and Chinese to see each other as family. “All Americans should understand that Chinese people and Americans can be family,” he said. “We can transcend differences if we focus on our common ground. We all love our countries, and we all value loyalty and respect – these are the shared virtues we hold dear.”
As for the sand he collected, Sakolsky said he would treat it as a treasure, alongside all his other precious keepsakes from China. He expects to display it in his living room – a daily reminder of the forest that carries his name and the people who made it grow.
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B | 在北京时间8月26日结束的欧冠附加赛次回合1场对决中，来自阿塞拜疆联赛的沙巴巴库上演惊天逆转，凭借次回合连扳4球的神奇表现，他们总比分6-4淘汰以色列球队贝尔谢巴工人，队史首次打进欧冠正赛。首回合比赛，沙巴巴库在客场1-2落后，已经陷入不利的局面。次回合回到主场，开场仅10分钟，沙巴巴库队门将又出现低级失误，兹拉坦诺维奇笑纳大礼，贝尔谢巴工人将总比分扩大至3-1。

C | 尽管第38分钟，恩瓦舒库为沙巴巴库队扳回一球。但第61分钟，沙巴巴库的门将波卡季洛夫再次出现超低级失误，贝尔谢巴工人再次将优势变为2球。然而此后，总比分2-4落后的沙巴巴库，却上演神奇剧情。他们在第74分钟先追回1球，随后常规时间补时第4分钟，依靠穆塔利莫夫精彩的凌空世界波完成绝平，将比赛拖入加时赛。随后的加时赛，心态崩盘的贝尔谢巴工人球员迪奥普，两张黄牌变成1张红牌被罚下。而多打1人士气大振的沙巴巴库，在第101分钟和第115分钟连进2球，最终总比分6-4完成大逆转。沙巴巴库也成为继卡拉巴赫之后，第2支征战欧冠正赛的阿塞拜疆球队。