Double misfortune struck a Chinese herbal medicine shop in Richmond this week.
Not only was Tung Yun Tong Herbal Co. at 4640 No. 3 Rd. robbed on Monday, but the robbers used bear spray to subdue an employee.
The robbers stole nearly $40,000 in medicinal food products, and the bear spray ruined many of the shop's products. So Vancouver Coastal Health shut it down.
"The spray had contaminated many of the food products and counter surfaces, and the exposed products need to be discarded," said manager of health protection Steve Chong.
According to Richmond RCMP, two men wearing blue shirts and baseball caps and carrying black duffel bags confronted store staff at about 4:30 p.m. on Monday. After spraying one employee with bear spray, the men took off with two jars of bird's nest worth $8,000, and three jars of a Chinese fungus called cordyceps, worth $30,000.
The two Caucasian men, described by RCMP as being "34 years old, 5'11" and 150 pounds," then fled the store in a blue or green Honda Odyssey. The van had a black bug deflector on the hood with a piece broken off on the passenger side, police said.
Staff at another Tung Yun Tong franchise in Chinatown said that the Richmond store's operators have hired professionals to remove the contaminated food products and to sanitize the store before reopening it in approximately two days.
Three similar robberies targeting bird's nest occurred in Richmond two years ago.
Bird's nest is considered by Chinese to be a gourmet delicacy with medicinal properties. It is made from layers of saliva produced by swiftlets and can be found in the caves of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and certain parts of China.
Served in rice broth or in a souplike dessert, bird's nest can promote younger-looking skin and provide other health benefits, said Thomas Dong of Healthfinder Traditional Chinese Medical Clinic in Vancouver.
"According to the textbooks, bird's nest has the ability to help people build up their immune systems," said Dong, who practised traditional Chinese medicine for 15 years in Taiwan before opening up a clinic in Vancouver.
"If you get some kind of disease that makes you very weak, and you feel your immune system is low, and you easily get illnesses and infections afterwards, bird's nest is something you can try."
Bird's nest comes in many varieties and prices, but it can cost as much as $1,000 for half a pound, he said.
Similarly, cordyceps fungus has healing properties for kidneys and lung illnesses, and can bring down joint swelling caused by diabetes, said Dong. The most expensive variety of cordyceps, known as dong chong zia cao in Chinese, can cost about $1,000 for a tenth of a pound, he said.
The investigation of the Richmond store robbery is continuing, and police are in the process of receiving surveillance footage, said Cpl. Sherrdean Turley.
The RCMP is asking anyone with information on this incident to call Const. Sarah Martin at 604-278-1212 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-22-8477.
This article is extracted from here.
