# 27 Years Later: A US Teacher Returns to Luoyang to See His Former Students > Retired American educator Ronald Sakolsky returned to Luoyang Foreign Language School last Saturday for an emotional reunion with former students. The visit is part of a China trip tied to his 26-year friendship with desert restoration figure Yin Yuzhen, during which he also visited the Longmen Grottoes and urged young people to take up environmental action. - Source: Times of China (Times of China) - Canonical URL: https://timesofchina.cn.com/en/article/sakolsky-luoyang-reunion-former-students - Chinese edition: https://timesofchina.cn.com/article/sakolsky-luoyang-reunion-former-students - Author: 中国时报编辑部 - Section: Society - Published: 2026-08-29T16:00:00+08:00 - Updated: 2026-08-29T16:00:00+08:00 - Tags: 罗纳德·萨科尔斯基, 洛阳, 殷玉珍, 中美人文交流, 师生情谊 --- Retired American educator Ronald Sakolsky returned to Luoyang, in Henan province, last Saturday, revisiting the Luoyang Foreign Language School classroom where he taught English back in 1999. The visit was part of a wider trip to China rooted in his 26-year friendship with desert restoration figure Yin Yuzhen. ## A reunion years in the making Walking into the school, Sakolsky found a blackboard reading welcome home, and many of his former students recognized him at once, including one who had traveled all the way from New Zealand to see him. Overcome by the moment, he apologized for tearing up, only for his former students to tell him not to hold back. He told the class he had never forgotten his years teaching there, and said that once someone became his student, they stayed one of his own for good. Asked with a smile whether he still played basketball, he explained that an arm injury had limited how much he could play these days, and recalled climbing a ladder alone to replace worn out basketball hoop nets while his students steadied it below him. He said watching his former students succeed had confirmed the value of the career he chose, describing teaching less as a job than as a way of life, and likening his students to sturdy, mature trees grown from seeds he had planted decades earlier. The reunion closed with group photos alongside alumni and school staff. ## The value of face to face contact At a media briefing that afternoon, Sakolsky spoke about his decades long connection to China and stressed the irreplaceable value of face to face human interaction. He said China had done much to shape his own personal growth and that letters from former students had moved him deeply, adding that while young people today spend so much time messaging through phones and computers, only face to face contact lets people truly feel each other's care and understanding. Fu Bo, a standing council member of the China Education Association for International Exchange who once served as the Chinese director of the US-China teacher exchange program Sakolsky took part in, said the genuine friendship across borders captured the true spirit of people to people exchange, and voiced hope that more such ordinary stories would come to light. She said educational exchange ultimately comes down to human connection, and that sincere, one on one dialogue keeps deepening understanding and friendship between the two peoples. ## A reunion tour from Inner Mongolia to Henan Sakolsky's rise to fame in China this year traces back to a public search Yin launched earlier in the year. Their friendship began in 1999, when Sakolsky traveled to Henan to teach under a US-China teacher exchange program. After seeing a television documentary about Yin's efforts to restore the barren Mu Us Desert in Inner Mongolia, he secured 5,000 US dollars from an American charity to support her tree planting work, a donation that helped turn degraded land into a woodland now home to more than 50,000 trees. Their story stayed largely untold for decades until Yin's widely shared appeal earlier this year tracked Sakolsky down, turning the retired teacher into a household name in China almost overnight. The two reunited in person for the first time in 26 years on August 23 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia. Sakolsky arrived in Luoyang on Thursday alongside Yin, and on Friday visited the UNESCO listed Longmen Grottoes and a local middle school, where he urged young people to take action on environmental protection, and said he plans to launch tree planting projects in the United States to share China's approach to ecological conservation abroad. --- Originally published by Times of China. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://timesofchina.cn.com/en/article/sakolsky-luoyang-reunion-former-students.