About Dr. Long Yu Qian

Long Yu Qian was born on the Chinese mainland in Liu Jiang Xian, a country town near the city of Liuzhou (now incorporated into that city), on September 24, 1929. Long survived the Japanese invasion of China (though he was kidnapped by the Japanese, forced into slave labor, and shot through the leg while escaping them). In 1951 Long became an agricultural specialist at the Liu Jiang Xian Agricultural Technology Station, where he rose to the rank of supervisor.

Long Yu Qian (ca. 1955)

From his maternal grandmother, a farmwoman of Zhuang lineage (the Zhuang are a minority people in south China), and others in their community, Long learned many traditional Chinese herbal and holistic treatments for a wide variety of ailments. Having witnessed first-hand the effectiveness of these cures while growing up, and having experienced a number of them himself, Long made them the basis of his eventual medical practice as a matter of course, such holistic techniques being well-established in Chinese medicine and widely accepted among the population in China.

Dr. Long did not study medicine formally, and became a licensed practitioner only in 1990. (Specialists in traditional Chinese medicine did not need licenses until that time.) Dr. Long provided his treatments to his community while working officially as a ?? He noted that many of the rural communities he served in that capacity, and even many people in his own neighborhood in Liuzhou, lacked adequate health services, and began putting to use the knowledge he'd acquired from his own rural relatives. As word of the effectiveness of his treatments spread, patients began to seek him out. He never charged for his medical services. Dr. Long practiced his approach to traditional Chinese medicine from 1970 to 2005, stopping just a few months before his death in early 2006.

Dr. Long Yu Qian (1995)

Dr. Long spent his working life primarily in and around his home town of Liuzhou, a small city (present population 1.3 million) in Guangxi Province, in the People's Republic of China. There, with his wife Liu Rong Jiao, a librarian, he raised six children — five daughters and one son — while serving his community as a pro bono general practitioner, meanwhile pursuing his researches into holistic medicine. In time, he became famous in the region, and within his profession, as a medical scholar and holistic healer.

In the late 1970s, and again in the middle 1980s, Dr. Long taught, researched, and practiced at Guangxi Traditional Chinese Medicine University, where a clinic had been established based on the Zhuang burning-string therapy he researched. In 1990 he became an official practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), licensed by the Guangxi Province Government. He became a member of the Guangxi National Medical Association, eventually serving as as vice-president of that organization's Executive Board. In 1991 he joined the staff of the Liuzhou Diqu People's Hospital (Liuzhou Diqu Renmin Yiyuan) as Vice-chief doctor. This institution is now the College of Medicine of Guangxi Province.

Dr. Long Yu Qian (19??)

Dr. Long Yu Qian (1995)

Among the techniques Dr. Long had acquired from his relatives, one proved proviously unrecorded: a system involving the brief application of the heated tip of a length of herb-soaked string to designated spots on the body. Dr. Long systematized this technique (formally known as "Zhuang burning-string therapy"), exploring its efficacy in relation to 200 illnesses, charting the precise configuration of the treatment of each symptomology, and annotating the results over the course of his medical career. Through his writings and teaching, he also made this method available to his fellow practitioners and to the general public. His book on this subject earned him an important award in 1987, and in 1992 he was honored by the Guangxi Province Government for his contributions to the field.