The craft
Bone-Setting & Die Da
Hands-on work in the Lingnan tradition, with Dr. Ivan Kong (Dr.TCM). He reads the joint and the soft tissue around it by hand, then decides whether realignment, soft-tissue release or an external herbal application is appropriate. Acute injury is his main focus.
Bone-setting is not simply pressing on things. On the same shoulder, how the tissue feels, where the joint stops moving, what the surrounding muscle is doing — there is no shortcut to those judgements except years of hands on people. Dr. Kong graduated from Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine in 1987 and went straight into the emergency department of Guangzhou Orthopaedic Hospital, where most of what came through the door could not wait.
Assessment comes before anything else. Where the problem is soft tissue and restricted movement, release work, realignment and an external herbal application may be worth considering. Where a disc, osteoporosis or a suspected fracture is involved, hands-on work has limits — he will say so plainly and send you for imaging first. That is a boundary, not a brush-off.
In an emergency, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency department. Obvious deformity, complete inability to bear weight, severe tenderness over bone, numbness or a white or blue-tinged limb — go straight to emergency, not to the clinic.
Tell us which one and when suits you. Cantonese, Mandarin and English.