Many Mysteries Of Miao Village Finally Unfold

code l name said:
Great post and that makes sense. My memory is foggy but can you remind me where it's indicated Zhu spent time with Iwao and Sunming in China? I know in Shenmue 2 he claims Sunming was his best friend but I couldn't recall of any other information which puts him in China with those two.
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Master Chen's "Zhu and your father brought back a certain mirror from China" line is what I'm going by.
 
Giorgio said:
Code: 
ONCEUPONATIME
BEAR_QTE

KUN_LOVE_CHK
KUN_LV1_CHK
KUN_LV2_CHK
KUN_LV3_CHK
KUN_LV4_CHK
"ONCEUPONATIME" sounds funny to me (maybe a fairytale told by Shenhua to Ryo?) and... "BEAR_QTE"!? You have to evade some panda/bear somewhere in the rural areas of Guilin? :tearsofjoy: (unless if "BEAR" ...bears another meaning, sorry for the pun... :sweatsmile:) (And seems "KUN" (Fangmei) has 4-5 staged of love for Ryo...) - All such flag's texts can be found here.
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Nice find; interesting that that's twice now that they've planned for a bear to appear only to cut it from the final game. At the China conference in 2015 Suzuki showed this slide showing that Ryo was supposed to cross paths with a bear early in Bailu in Shenmue III:

 
LanDC said:
Master Chen's "Zhu and your father brought back a certain mirror from China" line is what I'm going by.
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D'oh yes of course. It would be interesting trying to gather a timeline of when Zhu met Iwao and how and when his friendship with Sunming Zhao first started as you would presume some of these events crossed over.

I was also curious in the line in Shenmue 3 when Sunming was attempting to retrieve bother mirrors, it's said the mirrors were "entrusted to him". By who?
 
Not sure. I will have a look. Could be a bug somewhere
 
It's being investigated currently. We may need to go back to a backed up version of the site to see what we can restore. You can see old posts via Wayback Machine in the meantime.
 
Building on the findings in this thread, I've had a go at summarizing the story flow across a couple of posts. There's some additional dialogue & character model images added (as they appear in the release version, for now) to help envisage what the player's experience may have been.

The Secret of Miao Village: Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2022/08/part-eight-secret-of-miao-village.html

1.jpg
 
Switch said:
Building on the findings in this thread, I've had a go at summarizing the story flow across a couple of posts. There's some additional dialogue & character model images added (as they appear in the release version, for now) to help envisage what the player's experience may have been.

The Secret of Miao Village: Dialogue Revelations & Sequence of Events
https://www.phantomriverstone.com/2022/08/part-eight-secret-of-miao-village.html

View attachment 16768
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This is absolutely insane and I'm extremely bummed we missed out on experiencing this arc in the game itself :crying:

Incredible work as always, Switch! (y)
 
Great stuff as usual man - I posted about this in the Twitter thread but figured I'd share this observation here as well!

As the article mentions, it seems Yangming Dong originally had the role of travel agent (presumably at Man Mo Travel Co., a sign for which can be seen in South Carmain Qr. - torn and obscured in the final, but intact and readable in the Game Jam beta), before becoming one of the customers that plays Ryo at Lucky Hit when he's working one of the stands in the final release of the game...

Well, I remembered he had a VMU-style animation as part of the Shenmue Goodies 2 bonus and...it seems this is a leftover of his travel agent role! It seems as if he's at a counter handing a flyer to you, doesn't it?
https://shenmue.neoseeker.com/wiki/File:YangmingDongGoodies1.GIF
 
Really enjoyed reading this and seeing the quest unfold. It would have been quite an enjoyable change of pace to go there in game but alas it was cut... maybe we will find an early Beta where it is still there one day.

For now though great work.
 
Because I'm obsessive, I put a quick family tree together based on info revealed by @Switch in this article. It's really interesting that Ke Cuili, who ended up as a fortune teller in Dragon Street in the final game, is presumably Luo Kongzheng's (the man who was supposedly killed by the Chi You Men) sister! (her daughter Ke Rongling mentions that Kongzheng was her uncle)

Because Yu Laifu also mentions that Kongzheng is his uncle as well, we end up with a tree that links the Luo, Ke and Yu families together! If I've worked this out right, Kongzheng had two sisters - Cuili (whose children are Yiming and Ronglin) and an unnamed one not seen in the game (whose children are Yumei, Laifu and Linghua) - and thus these children are all cousins to Luo Zhengye, Kongzheng's only son.

Who knows if this family tree is even still 'canon' to the final game, given the Miao Village storyline was removed and most of these NPC's moved over to Dragon Street instead...but it's interesting nonetheless!

Luo Family Tree.png
 
Miles Prower said:
As the article mentions, it seems Yangming Dong originally had the role of travel agent (presumably at Man Mo Travel Co., a sign for which can be seen in South Carmain Qr. - torn and obscured in the final, but intact and readable in the Game Jam beta), before becoming one of the customers that plays Ryo at Lucky Hit when he's working one of the stands in the final release of the game...

Well, I remembered he had a VMU-style animation as part of the Shenmue Goodies 2 bonus and...it seems this is a leftover of his travel agent role! It seems as if he's at a counter handing a flyer to you, doesn't it?
https://shenmue.neoseeker.com/wiki/File:YangmingDongGoodies1.GIF
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Great observations - another goodies character's leftover presence explained! It's so great to see little mysteries like this connecting up after all this time.

The family tree is really helpful and lays out the relationships clearly.

One thing I'm wondering about is the nature of Xiangqi Long's relationship with Cuili, as he seems very protective of her whenever Ryo talks with him!
 
Miles Prower said:
Because I'm obsessive, I put a quick family tree together based on info revealed by @Switch in this article. It's really interesting that Ke Cuili, who ended up as a fortune teller in Dragon Street in the final game, is presumably Luo Kongzheng's (the man who was supposedly killed by the Chi You Men) sister! (her daughter Ke Rongling mentions that Kongzheng was her uncle)

Because Yu Laifu also mentions that Kongzheng is his uncle as well, we end up with a tree that links the Luo, Ke and Yu families together! If I've worked this out right, Kongzheng had two sisters - Cuili (whose children are Yiming and Ronglin) and an unnamed one not seen in the game (whose children are Yumei, Laifu and Linghua) - and thus these children are all cousins to Luo Zhengye, Kongzheng's only son.

Who knows if this family tree is even still 'canon' to the final game, given the Miao Village storyline was removed and most of these NPC's moved over to Dragon Street instead...but it's interesting nonetheless!

View attachment 16774
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I was wondering about the family tree too, but like "grandmother" (obaa-san) can be used for an elderly woman you are familiar with in Japan, the same goes for "uncle" (ojii-san) in that it can be used for an older man you are familiar with. I don't know if there is a way to know whether it's an actual blood relation uncle, or just an older man you are familiar with.

Regardless though I'd always been curious why so many of these Dragon Street characters had the same surnames but there is no real reason for it as it's not like you can have a conversation with them and they mention their relatives (as far as I know). It's nice to see finally an answer and a tree come together as the Shenmue II guides were all pretty light on info like families, unlike the Shenmue I guides.

Slightly related but, now my memory on this is kind of foggy so I might be wrong, but my memory was that in White Dynasty Quarter you can knock on doors of buildings and a child will answer to talk to Ryo. I always thought that was odd seeing as you can't do this in any other quarter (as far as I remember!) and also the White Dynasty Quarter is not used much in the game, so I'm wondering if this function could have been related to when Ryo has to find Zhengye. Just wild speculation on my part though (and if I'm remembering wrong, someone please correct me!).
 
I don’t recall doors in the White Dynasty Qr that can be knocked on (but may have to check now!) - if I recall right you can in Queens Street and people answer, but don’t recall in Wan Chai…
 
I double-checked and I was wrong, at least, I can't find any in White Dynasty Quarter, but I did find a couple I could knock on in Lucky Charm Quarter, but nobody answered. So never mind, I was wrong! I don't want to derail the thread :coldsweat:
 
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