Tintin's Adventures — Blue Lotus

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Features: This album can be considered a sequel. The story takes place in 1931. Here, Tintin meets Zhang, who later becomes his lifelong friend. At the same time, the disliked enemy Rastapopoulos reappears. When Hergé wrote this album, Japanese forces had occupied many parts of mainland China. In Shanghai, the major port city at the mouth of the Yangtze River where China conducted trade with the West, various international forces were vying for control, mainly dominated by British and American interests. Hergé set the story against this backdrop, using certain historical events as inspiration, including Japan bombing the Manchurian Railway and using it as a pretext to further invade China, to depict the undeniable historical fact of Japanese aggression against China. This fully demonstrates Hergé's extraordinary ability to skillfully blend history and fiction. It reminds us of Jin Yong. Later, Soong Mei-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, invited Hergé to visit China, but the trip was never realized due to World War II.