Darn, I lied. I said I wasnt goinbg to say anymore on this topic. However,
this seems important. There are several ways the characters could be
'named':

Viz translation - Shampoo
Chinese pinyin romanisation - shan pu
phonetic transcription from Japanese - shanpuu
Arbitrary mistranslation - Xian Pu

There is an extra argument in favour of the arbitrary translation. Mandarin
Chinese is only spoken by about 70% of China, and not all of those are as a
first language. Seeing as how Joketsuzoku is rather remote, it stands to
reason that they speak a different language. And as with all Han languages,
the kanji (ok, hanzi) are pronounced differently in different languages. So,
'Xian Pu', 'Khu Lon' and 'Muu Tsu' could well be their real names in the
language of the village. The manga doesn't actually say they speak mandarin
chinese after all.

Stories that take this line should be prepared to receive heavy criticism if
'Xian Pu' goes on to speak perfect Chinese in Shanghai or Beijing. 'Khu Lon'
would have no problems, and 'Muu Tsu' might speak a major chinese language,
author choice. Oh, and most people in Shanghai natively speak Wu, not
Mandarin, although the government's education programme is changing this.
Same goes for Hong Kong - they mostly speak Cantonese, although Mandarin is
now compulsory.

If English is a wonderful set of languages, Chinese is doubly so.

---
Rhialto
honjitsu wa watashi ga genki desu. raijitsu wa kami ga kimemasu



ps email me for teh ranmadic.zip file