Thursday 21 September 2017

Dou Jiang... What?

It's safe to say that everyone who has played through Shenmue II will know this restaurant in the Lucky Charm Qr. It's an integral part of the story and is a place you have to visit every time.


But what is it actually called? Even the game itself seems to be rather unsure about its name...

This is a similar situation like in the post I made about the lost Man Mo store, where you can see an old texture in the preloaded portion of the next area ahead. The difference this time is that it can clearly be seen without resorting to glitches or any other kind of trickery.


We all know that the sign of the restaurant clearly says "Dou Jiang Diner" in big yellow letters but when peaking over the stairs from the White Dyansty Qr like this you can easily see that the sign is looking odd. The colors are changed and it seems that the English writing is different...

Of course we can go further with the map glitch, walk up the stairs and take a closer look at this low detail version of the restaurants storefront and its signs. Now it's absolutely clear, the sign says "Dou Jiang Kitchen" in dark green letters.


This was probably a similar oversight as in the aforementioned case with the Man Mo sign, meaning that things have changed, textures had to be replaced and they forgot about the low resolution ones.

Now the question is, which one is the right name? Diner or Kitchen? It's clear that the Chinese sign only underwent cosmetic changes and the Kanji stayed the same. So what is that all about then?

As a disclaimer: I have no actual knowledge of the Chinese language and everything provided herein is just based on rather basic translation work.

Well it turns out that neither Diner nor Kitchen are quite the right wording. The sign reads "Dòu jiāng xuān" (豆将軒) in Chinese and that would lead to "Dou Jiang Pavilion". It doesn't really look like a pavilion in any way and that's probably why it got a more generic name down the line, especially with the diner moniker. And it the whole name is translated directly word by word it comes out to "There Will Be Beans Pavilion".



1 comment:

  1. Nice find! In Shenmue 1, the same Chinese character 軒 is used in the name of the Manpukuken Ramen restaurant, but they kept it for the sound ("ken" in Japanese) rather than translating it.

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