‘We thought he wanted to be our friend’

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This article was published 15/01/2015 (4099 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MINNEDOSA — Whether or not you’ve ever been to Sun Sun Chinese Restaurant, you’d find the interior familiar.

A red paper lantern sits in the centre of the dining-room ceiling. Glass-encased porcelain sculptures hang on the walls. Aluminum bins full of breaded shrimp, egg rolls and nuclear-red sweet-and-sour sauce are perched on the $9.49 lunch-buffet table.

Almost every small town in Manitoba has a Chinese-Canadian restaurant of this ilk, where bacon-and-egg sandwiches are offered on a menu alongside honey garlic ribs.

The owners of Sun Sun, however, have run afoul of lawmakers for acquiring far more exotic foodstuffs: two gall bladders from a black bear and a hind quarter from the same ursine species, which is abundant in Manitoba but whose flesh may not be sold.

Late last year, Sun Sun owner Jun Shao Lin pleaded guilty to seven wildlife and fisheries charges and agreed to pay $6,891 in fines. Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship caught him trying to buy a black bear head, gall bladders and paws to make a soup that was not intended for sale to customers.

As his wife, Maggie, explained Wednesday, the soup was a traditional medicinal treatment for his mother, who suffers from a shoulder ailment.

“We just wanted it for medication. We couldn’t get it any other way,” she said, implying the illicit nature of acquiring black-bear parts is secondary to a cultural imperative.

“In China, family is more important,” she said. “We’ve never done anything illegal, except this time. Something happened.”

That something was a 14-month undercover investigation dubbed Operation Sunscreen, in which a conservation officer posed as a hunter, befriended Lin and eventually sold him a pair of bear gall bladders.

“Somebody set us up,” said Maggie. “We thought he wanted to be our friend.”

The operative went as far as buying baby clothes for the youngest of her two daughters, she said.

North American black bear gall bladders, however, can sell for as much as $10,000 in Asia, where indigenous bear species suffer from poaching and deforestation and are increasingly rare.

Lin was fully aware he was doing something illegal when he obtained the gall bladders, said Jack Harrigan, manager of compliance and field services for Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship’s wildlife branch.

As well, the hind quarter in Lin’s possession was acquired from a source other than the undercover agent, Harrigan noted.

He said there’s no reason to believe unsuspecting Sun Sun customers would have consumed black bear, given the risk and expense associated with acquiring the illicit meat.

“There would be no advantage to serving it,” Harrigan said.

As far as rural Chinese-Canadian buffets go, Sun Sun offers a decent one, as stir-fried noodles flecked with barbecued pork and a traditional round wonton dumpling soup share space with the deep-fried fare.

Ray Orr is a fan of the food, service and people at Sun Sun, which sits three blocks north of his Main Street office.

“They provide a good service to this community. They’re open eight to eight, six days a week. We don’t have a lot of restaurants in a community of this size,” said Orr, mayor of the western Manitoba town of 2,587.

“They’re well-regarded. They run a good business. We support them, and we hope they remain here and are successful,” said the mayor, who did not know of the wildlife regulation violations. “Maybe it was a cultural thing, and they needed to find out it was illegal.”

Given that Lin and provincial officials agreed on the facts of the case, that doesn’t appear likely. Nonetheless, Sun Sun’s owners hope their customers will continue to support them.

The southern Chinese emigres moved to Minnedosa two years ago after a stint in Saskatchewan.

“People here are very friendly,” said Maggie, tearing up as she reached for a paper napkin from a table-top holder bearing a handwritten list of five different $8.99 lunch specials.

“This has taken such a long time,” she said, referring to the investigation. “We just want this to be over.”

She sat crying for a moment, while her two toddlers fiddled with their own lunches at a table near the kitchen. She then composed herself, wiped down a table and offered more water to the reporter and photographer who came to see the Chinese restaurant where the owner acquired the innards of black bears.

 

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca