The blue Lotus

the blue Lotus ( the adventures Tintin to defer in the Extrème-East: The blue Lotus , Hergé, 1936) is the fourth album of Cartoon of the adventures of Tintin , published in black and white in the pages of the " Small Vingtième" , supplement of the newspaper the Twentieth Century.

Synopsis

A messenger from China comes to meet Tintin with Rawajpoutalah but it is touched by a dart poisoned with the radjaïdjah, the poison which makes insane. It has only time to pronounce the words Shanghai and Mitsuhirato, before sinking in the madness. Most probably, this business has a bond with the drug traffickers that Tintin fought in the album the Cigars of the Pharaon . Tintin leaves to Shanghai to meet Mitsuhirato, but undergoes various missed attacks…

After an interview with Mitsuhirato which it convainct to return to India, it is removed by Wang Jen-Ghié, an old man who fights the traffic of opium with his organization, “the Wire of the Dragon”, and which learns in Tintin that Mitsuhirato is in fact a drug trafficker. The continuation takes a more political turning: following a simulated attack, the Japan invades the China and Tintin is taken in the conflict. Meanwhile, continued by the police force and the Japanese army it saves the life of Tchang, a young Chinese who becomes his friend. Finally, it succeeds in discovering that the gang of traficants of opium which it had fought in India is directed by Roberto Rastapopoulos, appeared in the Cigars of the Pharaon . Ventilating the plot, he manages to make cure the son of Wang of his madness, and to make adopt Tchang by this one, while Japan withdraws its troops of invasions. It is with a tear that Tintin leaves his/her Chinese friends for Europe…

Around the album

Without being a formal continuation, the blue Lotus is rather an account complementary to the Cigares of the Pharaon .

Published in 1936, the blue Lotus is undoubtedly the album of Tintin nearest to the topicality of the time. Hergé clearly referred there to the incidental of Mukden and the invasion which followed, modifying only some nouns. It is also the first album showing a true preoccupation with a realism, Hergé having received the assistance of Zhang Chongren, young student Chinese in art which had been referred to him, and which was used as source of inspiration for the character of Tchang. Thus, all the visible Chinese texts in this cartoon have a real significance. A deep friendship bound the two men.

the character of the consul of Poldévie , taken for Tintin in the smoking of opium, fact allusion to a famous hoax of the time (see Poldèvie).

Since 1993 the blue Lotus is published with the Japan, in spite of the strong tone anti-Japanese of the album. The album refers to the incidental of Mukden, most probably perpetrated by the Japanese, and which was the release of the Japanese invasion in Mandchourie. The Japanese version has an introduction which explains the political situation of the time. Moreover, Hergé adopts for the first time a anti-colonial position, describing China oppressed by the Japanese invader and of Europeans without scruples making trade of opium and bathing in equivocal businesses.

Adaptations

Other versions of the album

The edition colors which we know date of 1946. At the time of the setting color, only some boards of the beginning were redrawn. The first pages of the album where Tintin is always in India are redrawn to resemble the recent albums, but the remainder of the account, starting from the page where Tintin unloads in China, is left in its style " ancien".

Animated version

This album was adapted in the animated series of 1992

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