In The Blue Lotus (1936), as he chases drug traffickers all the way to China, Tintin meets a young Chinese boy who will help him get rid of all his prejudices. Rastapopoulos will reveal himself as a ferocious enemy and Tintin will in fact meet him again later… Hergé, constantly improving his story telling and drawing techniques, will give primary importance to scenario and documentation. His quest for authenticity shows throughout, and he judges without any complacency the expansionist politics of Japan in its devastating conflict with China. Tintin’s ongoing battle against the traffickers takes him to China where he meets Chang. Chang is Hergé’s friend in real life. This is he who helped Hergé to prepare this adventure where Tintin will need determination, audacity and intelligence to evade all the traps set on his road. #0115/1219/0120/0220/0121/0621/010223/050224 US edition
The Blue Lotus (French: Le Lotus bleu) is the fifth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from August 1934 to October 1935 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1936. Continuing where the plot of the previous story, Cigars of the Pharaoh, left off, the story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are invited to China in the midst of the 1931 Japanese invasion, where he reveals the machinations of Japanese spies and uncovers a drug-smuggling ring.