Shenmue Dojo

Check out the "Shenmue Online: Concept Art" video. Although the video is related to Shenmue Online, it reveals a lot about the original series.

Between 0:27-0:32 of the video, Yu Suzuki showed a map annotated with the chapter numbers and their corresponding locations:

• Chapter 1: Yokosuka.
• Chapter 2: The Boat. This is not in Shenmue II, but is in the side story comics.
• Chapter 3: Hong Kong.
• Chapter 4: Kowloon City.
• Chapter 5. The kanji is illegible (to me), but it suggests a river's name. It may be one of the rivers along which Ryo travelled by boat to Guilin. I think this chapter contains minor details to the game, so it was left out as was Chapter 2. [Updated: It is Li River. See the discussions below.]
• Chapter 6: Bailu. This is Shenhua's home village, which Ryo never got to in the Guilin part of Shenmue II.

The map also has other locations which Ryo will likely visit, starting from the bottom:

• The kanji is illegible (to me), but it is near Shanghai. [Updated: It is Suzhou. See the discussions below.]
• Luoyang. The tapestry in Shenhua's house depicts the city.
• Meng Cun. Lan Di said that Iwao killed Zhao there.
• Beijing.

The map confirmed Shenmue's first 6 chapters and probably all of the relevant locations.

Here are the map's screenshots from the video to clarify the first post:


As you can see, some of the kanji in the video are too blurry to be identified. [Updated: All of the locations are now identified with Kiyuu's help.]

To reinforce that the concept art is indeed from the original series rather than Shenmue Online, at least one of the artworks already appeared in Shenmue Premiere 1998. Please compare the artwork in the following two videos:

• Shenmue Online: Concept Art.
  
• GDC 2000: Yu Suzuki and Shenmue Part 2 at 7:27.
  

There are more of the interesting artworks in the "Shenmue Online: Concept Art" video:

Wow, awesome topic, yaochung.

Sooner or later hopw we end of visiting all those locations.

Many thanks for the hard work.

Nice catch! This will be added to the Shenmue 3 research topic.

I had never seen these pics.... thanks!

Great work yaochung, always good to uncover something new in the Shenmue Universe...

That is really cool. Great find!

Just thinking that, location wise, we have only really been to half the locations is amazing. The thing I really like about Shenmue is that the entire story was planned from the beginning, so going to Meng Cun and uncovering a mystery from the very beginning of the game is great. I really hope Shenmue 3 is released in the not too distant future, so we can finally witness the entirety of this grand adventure.

yaochung wrote:Chapter 5. The kanji is illegible (to me), but it suggests a river's name. It may be one of the rivers along which Ryo travelled by boat to Guilin. I think this chapter contains minor details to the game, so it was left out as was Chapter 2.

It looks like Li River (漓江) to me. Yes. It's said that there used to be a considerable length of journey between Hong Kong and Guilin.

As for the "someplace near Shanghai," it has to be Suzhou (蘇州) as you see in this map.



Thank you for the topic. Interesting speculations.

Kiyuu wrote:It looks like Li River (漓江) to me. Yes. It's said that there used to be a considerable length of journey between Hong Kong and Guilin.

Since You have mentioned it, I can now be sure that it is Li River (or Lijiang) which flows through Guilin.

Kiyuu wrote:As for the "someplace near Shanghai," it has to be Suzhou (蘇州) as you see in this map.

I think you are spot on. I have updated the images of the map with all of the identified locations.

Thanks, Kiyuu.

Not too sure about that map dude, but Guilin is in Southern China, not too far from the Thailand/Vietnam border.

You are slightly mistaken, its northwest of Hong Kong about 300 miles, and the Vietnam border is also about 300 miles from it. So the map is right. It reflects any other accurate map.

Peter wrote:Not too sure about that map dude, but Guilin is in Southern China, not too far from the Thailand/Vietnam border.

The map looks alright, like Spokane said.

Think just agree to disagree on that one

This is Guilin on Google Maps.

Those maps look about the same.