For Yang Tengzhou, a 75-year-old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, this Spring Festival seemed no different from the previous 25.

It was the third day of the Chinese Year of the Horse, and most people living in Shaliwan, a mountainous neighborhood of Anhua county in central Hunan province, were busy visiting relatives and friends.

As usual, Yang got up at 6 am and went out for a 1-kilometer walk after breakfast. Then, he put on a pair of black-framed glasses and sat at a dark wooden desk to wait for his patients.

At 2 pm, Li Jinjie rushed in with his 4-year-old granddaughter Xun Xun.

"Doctor Yang! Doctor Yang! Could you please take a quick look at my granddaughter? She is having a bad cough," the 65-year-old man shouted as he worked his way through the crowd.

Li, a local farmer who lives only 500 meters away from Yang's house, has relied on Yang's doctoring since Li was in his 40s. After a careful check of the little girl, the TCM doctor quickly scribbled out a prescription, so the two could be on their way to visit relatives for the holiday.

Li passed the slip of paper to an old woman in the pharmacy next door, and he got some medicine that cost him 8 yuan ($1.32), which Yang's 21-year-old grandson Xia Heng says was "less than what it would cost to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola".

Yang is famous for his medical skills, low fees and 365-day service.

He continues to work until the eve of the lunar New Year. Even the family reunion dinner can only begin after the last patient of the year has left.

Over the past decades, thousands of people from a 50-kilometer radius have visited his clinic, which is tucked in the mountains and is also his home.

The quiet woman in the pharmacy, Wang Maolan, is Yang's 73-year-old wife. She has served as his assistant since Yang retired from the health center in town, where he worked as a doctor for 30 years. He opened the clinic at home in 1989.

The couple has a son and three daughters. The son and one daughter work and live in the county town Dongping, about one and a half hours from the village by car; the other two daughters have settled down in Wuhan and Shanghai.

However, Yang only visited the daughter in Wuhan once about two decades ago and he never paid a visit to Shanghai. Actually, he hasn't been to the county town for 23 years.

Wang has no complaint at all—she's very proud of her husband.

"In some cases, the patients who were brought here by stretchers finally can walk by themselves," says Wang, who studied medicine in a vocational school when she was young.

Despite Yang's reputation for treating rare and complicated illnesses, not all visitors go home with satisfactory results.

A man from the neighboring city Changde of Hunan province stood in line at the clinic for a whole day to ask Yang one question: "How can my bone hyperplasia be cured by having traditional Chinese medicine?"

Yang had no answer for it.

"I cannot do miracles. It is impossible to cure the disease. I simply told him to go back and do moderate exercise," Yang recalls.

"I am a TCM doctor and what I do is to figure out the nature of the disease. Then I can prescribe the proper herbs to deal with it. Only in this way, can the medicine be effective."

"While we have already sent some on-the-job doctors to most neighborhoods, we don't have one in Shaliwan. Yang's work is for sure helpful in an area short of medical services and supplies," says Qu Zhaohui, vice-director of the health center in Yangjiaotang town.

They have sent a pharmacist to help Yang, and as a result, the clinic serves as the health center's community-level section for outpatients in Shaliwan.

Yang was brought up in a family where he had witnessed his grandmother, a surgeon, practice medical ethics since he was young.

At that time, a patient was always accompanied by two bearers and another referrer. Yang's grandmother not only charged quite low fees for the medical service, but also provided meals for all of them.

When Yang turned 18, he chose to learn traditional Chinese medicine to make a living.

Before being apprenticed to a veteran TCM doctor, Yang had to kneel down and answer a series of questions.

For example, would you visit a patient in urgent condition at midnight? Would you go to see a patient living miles away? Would you still make the visit during rainy and snowy days?

Yang said "yes" to all the questions and he never dares to forget them to this day.

There is a blue blackboard hanging on the front door of Yang's house which reads: "Warm Tip: Dear patients, the working time of the clinic will be 8 am-12:30 pm and 1:30-6 pm. Visitors are not accepted at other time. Please understand."

The notice was meant to take effect from Feb 26, 2011.

However, it has never worked at all. Visitors believe that whenever they come, Doctor Yang will be right here waiting for them. Some patients even knock on the door at midnight and wake up the whole family.

Yang's children worry that the work is too tiring and they have urged him to close the clinic many times.

"I never feel tired," he says. "It has become a part of my everyday life after years of practice. Actually, what I have done is simply chat with the patients and some of them are also my old friends.

"Moreover, it is a real pleasure when I can cure their illnesses."

Contact the writer at mojingxi@chinadaily.com.cn.

Yang Tengzhou,75,has provided 365-day traditional Chinese medicine service for villagers over the past 25 years

Visitors to Yang's clinic believe he will see them, anytime day or night.