Kinship beyond borders

World Environment Day this year focuses on climate change, with an eye on the Earth's alarming distress signals - rising seas, raging wildfires, heatwaves and melting glaciers. That's why China has been actively pushing for a greener world. It has contributed roughly 25 percent of the world's green renewal in recent years. Efforts to push back encroaching barren deserts, including the Mu Us Desert, one of the four major sandy lands in China, resonate with people, including those between China and the US. In 1999, Ronald Sakolsky, an American middle school exchange teacher in central China's Henan Province, raised 5-thousand dollars to help a Chinese couple plant more tree saplings in China's Mu Us Desert. Today, that gift has grown into more than 50,000 thriving trees across the desert. We talked to the American teacher who, together with his Chinese friends across the Pacific, made an unforgettable story of kinship and respect.