9月14日中山区新冠肺炎疫情防控指挥部发布 关于对未落实防疫要求商家停业整顿的通报9月14日，中山区新冠肺炎疫情防控指挥部对辖区商家进行检查，发现部分商家未经批准擅自开业经营，存在疫情传播风险隐患。现将发现的问题、查处情况通报如下： 中山区连客隆生鲜超市、中山区广盛生鲜超市、中山区高原家综合超市、中山区家客隆超市、中山区麦特佳超市、中山区天桥商店、中山区宜嘉生鲜水果超市、中山区佳盈超市、中山区缘聚园食杂店、中山区桃源中联食品经营部 共10家商铺，屡次违反疫情防控要求，擅自多次开业经营，售卖商品，存在严重疫情传播风险。         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.
。中山区新冠肺炎疫情防控指挥部决定责令以上经营单位立即停业整顿，认真整改问题。当前，疫情防控风险犹存，严格落实防疫要求是全社会的责任。全区各类经营场所主办方要以此为戒，严格落实疫情防控要求。对不落实疫情防控措施，扰乱疫情防控秩序的各类经营场所主办方，将依法依规进行处罚。

B | 中山区新冠肺炎疫情防控指挥部 2022年9月14日