Out of every 1,000 Chinese, three suffer from curvature of the spine. Many of the patients in the department live in remote areas with limited access to medical information. When they seek treatment, they are often already very sick, Liang says.

Liang has had several papers on scoliosis published in Spine, an international, peer-reviewed periodical.

It is not easy to have papers published in Spine because few people have seen Liang's patients with severe scoliosis and cannot assess his papers, says Liao Guanghua, a former vice-president of Liang's hospital.

As many patients are financially underprivileged, Liang has persuaded some rich friends to donate money.

When he visited a teahouse, he would put up a notice with a description of patients to raise funds.

Once, when a mother begged Liang to save her 12-year-old girl with a curvature of 130 degrees, Liang spent his own money renting a small apartment only five minutes' walk from the hospital so that he was reachable in times of emergency.

The girl suffered from respiratory failure and was dying because her bent spine had damaged her lungs.

Liang's treatment was successful and the girl has since graduated from an institution of higher learning in Chengdu.

Thanks to his superb medical skills and readiness to help needy patients, Liang was honored during China Central Television's annual "Touching China" awards in February 2017.

As hundreds of millions of people watched the awards ceremony, Liang achieved national fame and many patients sought his help.

With some 300 patients waiting for operations, Liang no longer has time to visit teahouses.

In addition to treating those in his department, however, he visits remote areas in different parts of the country to offer consultations free of charge.

A photo of Liang sleeping on two stools in an operation room after a more than five-hour operation has gone viral. Zhong Dingping, the colleague who took the photo, says it was taken in May 2013. Liang is much busier than he was eight years ago.

Liang operates on 250 scoliosis patients a year and each week he works for three-and-a-half days in the hospital's outpatient section.