Background during the
Mukden Incident in 1931, one of the events of the contemporary
Sino-Japanese War depicted in
The Blue Lotus. Georges Remi—best known under the pen name
Hergé—was employed as editor and illustrator of ("
The Little Twentieth"), a children's supplement to ("
The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic,
conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels which was run by the
Abbé Norbert Wallez. In 1929, Hergé began
The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for , about the exploits of fictional young Belgian reporter
Tintin. Wallez ordered Hergé to set his first adventure in the
Soviet Union to act as
anti-socialist propaganda for children (
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets), to set his second adventure in the
Belgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment (
Tintin in the Congo), and to set his third adventure in the United States to use the story as a denunciation of American capitalism (
Tintin in America). On 24 November 1932,
Le Petit Vingtième published a fictional interview with Tintin in which the reporter announced that he would travel to China via Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, and Indochina. This plotline resulted in
Tintin in the Orient, the first part of which was an
Adventure set in Egypt, Arabia, and India that Hergé later titled
Cigars of the Pharaoh.
Cigars ceased publication in
Le Petit Vingtième in February 1934, and Hergé next provided the standalone story
Popol out West for the newspaper.
The Blue Lotus was the second half of the
Tintin in the Orient story that Hergé had begun with
Cigars of the Pharaoh. However, Hergé knew as little about China as he did about the Soviet Union or the Belgian Congo. At the time most Belgians held to a negative stereotype of China, viewing it as "a distant continent of a nation, barbaric, overpopulated, and inscrutable", and Hergé had long believed this view. He had included Chinese characters in two previous
Adventures, in both instances depicting them according to traditional European clichés. In
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, he included two pigtailed Chinese men hired by the Bolsheviks to torture Tintin, while in
Tintin in America he featured two Chinese hoodlums who plotted to eat Snowy. Hergé learned a bit about the country from
Albert Londres' book
China Madness, based on Londres' experiences in the country. He was also influenced in his portrayal of China by the 1933 German film
Flüchtlinge (
At the End of the World). Learning of Hergé's intention to set the next
Adventure in China, Abbot Léon Gosset, a Roman Catholic chaplain to the Chinese students at the
Catholic University of Leuven, contacted Hergé and asked him to be cautious in his depiction of the country. His students read
Le Petit Vingtième and he thought it would be counterproductive if Hergé continued to propagate negative stereotypes about the Chinese people. Hergé was sensitive to Gosset's ideas, and Gosset proceeded to put him in touch with two of his Chinese students, Arnold Chiao Ch'eng-Chih and his wife Susan Lin. He also gave him the address of a Chinese student a year Hergé's junior,
Zhang Chongren. The pair first met on 1 May 1934, soon becoming close friends and spending every Sunday afternoon with each other for over a year. Zhang later commented that he and Hergé became akin to "two brothers". A student of painting and sculpture at Brussels'
Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Zhang taught Hergé about Chinese artistic styles, giving him a set of traditional Chinese brushes and explaining to him the art of painting a tree and Chinese calligraphy, alongside explaining the tenets of
Taoist philosophy. Both his artistic and philosophical training under Zhang would have a profound effect on Hergé. Hergé had also established contact with Father Édouard Neut, hosteller at the
St. Andrew's Abbey near
Bruges. Neut had a special interest in China, and was excited by Hergé's latest venture, commenting that it could contribute to "a work of inter-racial understanding and true friendship between Orientals and whites". He sent him two books, Father Thadée's
Aux origines du conflict mandchou (
On the Origins of the Manchu Conflict) and Zheng Zheng's
Ma Mère (
My Mother), a first-hand account of Chinese family life. He also sent Hergé a 1932 article discussing the differences between Chinese and Japanese cultures. At the time, Neut was working as the assistant of
Lu Zhengxiang, a former prime minister of China who had become a monk at St. Andrew's Abbey. Mainstream Western press was broadly sympathetic to the Japanese cause, viewing them as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, a view that Hergé was to eschew.
Original publication, 1934–35 The comic strip began serialisation in
Le Petit Vingtième on 9 August 1934 as
Les Aventures De Tintin Reporter En Extrême-Orient (
The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter in the Far East). It began serialisation in France in
Cœurs Vaillants from 29 December 1935, and later in the Swiss magazine ''L'Écho Illustré
. Alongside protagonists Tintin and Snowy, Hergé also included the detectives Thomson and Thompson in the story, who had been introduced in the previous story. He also alluded to the movie that Tintin and Snowy had interrupted the filming of in Cigars'', Rastapopoulos' ''The Sheik's House'', by having the characters watch the film during a cinema screening. Hergé actively satirised typical European opinions of China in
The Blue Lotus. He had Thomson and Thompson dress in what they perceived as traditional Chinese costume, as
Mandarins, only to stand out in stark contrast to the actual clothing worn in China. He also had Gibbons, one of the story's antagonists, express racist attitudes toward the Chinese, and made Tintin give a speech to Chang explaining western misunderstandings of the Chinese. He took "a radical view" by expressing a criticism of Western activity in China's International Settlement, depicting it as extremely corrupt and only interested in its own commercial interests. He gained much of his information on such issues from Zhang, who informed him of the political events occurring in China from a Chinese perspective. Building on this information, Hergé's depiction of the Japanese invasion was largely accurate, although it served as an outright attack on Japanese imperialism. Hergé depicted fictionalised versions of both the real-life
Mukden Incident, although he shifted its location nearer to Shanghai, and Japan's walking out of the
League of Nations. However,
The Blue Lotus contained no mention of one of the central historical events of the period, the
Long March of communist
Mao Zedong. Further devoting himself to greater accuracy, Hergé also made increasing use of photographs to draw from, such as of Chinese clothing, street scenes, and landscape. Hergé's newfound emphasis on accuracy and documentation imbued the rest of the
Adventures. While Hergé relied on nonsensical Arabic for the backgrounds in
Cigars, for
The Blue Lotus Zhang drew many of the
ideograms that appeared as street signs and advertisements throughout the story. (The accuracy of the characters varies considerably.) Among these ideograms were those of a political nature, proclaiming slogans such as "Down with Imperialism", "Abolish unfair treaties", and "Down with Japanese merchandise". Zhang also sketched out a number of images for Hergé, such as the outline of Wang's house. Zhang's signature was also included twice throughout the comic, reflecting his artistic contribution; Hergé wanted to include Zhang's name as co-author before Zhang declined, which did not happen previously and subsequently in the other books. In gratitude, Hergé created the character of Chang in honour of his friend Zhang. Upon realising the anti-Japanese tone of the story, Japan's diplomats stationed in Belgium issued an official complaint, conveyed to Hergé by Lieutenant-General Raoul Pontus, president of the Sino-Belgian Friendship Association. The diplomats threatened to take their complaint to the
Permanent Court of International Justice at
The Hague. In learning of this, Zhang congratulated Hergé, stating that it would only further expose the actions of Japan in China to further international scrutiny and would make Hergé "world-famous". Hergé's strip also came under criticism from a Belgian general, who commented: "This is not a story for children ... It's just a problem for Asia!" The story was nevertheless a commercial success, and
Le Petit Vingtième organised a celebration to commemorate the return of Tintin from the Far East, sponsored by the L'Innovation and Bon Marché department stores. Taking place at the
Cirque Royal, it was attended by 3000 fans of the series, many of whom were Scouts, and involved an actor portraying Tintin who accompanied Hergé, the newspaper's staff, a contortionist and a clown. In September 1935, Zhang returned to China at his family's request. Hergé meanwhile set about preparing the strip for publication in book form through
Casterman. Proud of this
Adventure, he encouraged them to increase the level of marketing and advertising for the work. At their advice, he renamed the story from
The Adventures of Tintin in the Far East to
The Blue Lotus, commenting of this new title: "It is short, it sounds Chinese and it is mysterious". At Casterman's prompting, he also inserted four coloured plates throughout the work, and devised a new design for the front cover. The book was finally published in October 1936. Hergé was pleased with the product, commenting: "I was just bowled over! It is the height of luxury and my first thought was 'It's much too good for children!' ... I was far from expecting that". He sent a copy to Zhang, who replied to thank him. After news of its publication reached China, in 1939 political leader
Chiang Kai-shek, who had enjoyed
The Blue Lotus, asked his wife
Soong Mei-ling to invite Hergé to visit them there, although he was unable to do so due to the impending
Second World War. He finally took up her offer in 1973, visiting her on the island of
Taiwan.
Second version, 1946 In the 1940s and 1950s, when Hergé's popularity had increased, he and his team at
Studios Hergé redrew many of the original black-and-white Tintin adventures in colour using the ("clear line") drawing style he had developed so that they visually fitted in with the new Tintin stories being created. The Studios reformatted and coloured
The Blue Lotus in 1946. Apart from the first four pages, which were completely remade, little was actually changed for the 1946 edition, although many of the backgrounds were embellished. Minor alterations included replacing three highland Scotsmen who briefly featured in one scene with three Sikhs. The map that appears on the opening page was made smaller, while a reference to
Sir Malcolm Campbell was removed. The European Palace Hotel was renamed The Continental, while Gibbons' company was also renamed from the Americano-Anglo Chinese Company Limited to American and Chinese Steel Incorporated, and the drug smuggling ship known as the S.S.
City of Doodlecastle was renamed the
S.S. Harika Maru.
Later publications Both Rastapopoulos and Dawson reappeared in the series 20 years later in
The Red Sea Sharks. Casterman republished the original black-and-white version in 1979 in a French-language collected volume with
Cigars of the Pharaoh and
The Broken Ear, the second part of the collection. In 1985, Casterman published a facsimile version of the original. Meanwhile,
Methuen, the British publisher of
The Adventures of Tintin, felt that the story was dated, and only published
The Blue Lotus in 1983, the year of Hergé's death. The translation into English was undertaken by Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, although it lost the English accent of the British troops which was conveyed in the original French.
The Adventures of Tintin also became popular in Japan, something
Michael Farr thought indicated that the Japanese had not taken offence to Hergé's portrayal of them in
The Blue Lotus. After Hergé's death, the original illustrated manuscript of
The Blue Lotus was discovered at Studio Hergé, and was subsequently exhibited as the centrepiece of an exhibit commemorating the 60th anniversary of
The Adventures of Tintin.
Auction of draft cover The first draft of the cover to
The Blue Lotus was given by Hergé in 1936 to Jean-Paul Casterman, the son of Louis Casterman, Hergé's editor. Jean-Paul Casterman folded the drawing and put in a drawer. It stayed in the drawer until 1981, when Jean-Paul Casterman retrieved it and asked Hergé to sign it. It was auctioned on January 14, 2021, and proceeds were "more than three million
euros". ==Critical analysis==