In 1999, an American teacher gave $5,000 to a Chinese woman fighting a desert. 27 years later, they reunited in tears after her trees grew into a 50,000-tree forest

In 1999, American teacher Ronald Sakolsky was teaching English in China when a television report about Yin Yuzhen, a woman planting trees to fight desertification in Inner Mongolia, moved him to act.

He spent two months raising $5,000 to support her work. Nearly three decades later, that small act of kindness had helped become part of a forest of more than 50,000 trees — and brought the two strangers-turned-friends together again.