Nidhi Dorairaj Bruce

It's the birth anniversary of Herge, the man who created Tintin. And this story is about one of his most endearing characters. It was in the early 30s that a certain Father Gosset heard that Georges Remi's next serialized Tintin story would be about China. And he advised him to meet a young Chinese artist, Zhang Chongren, then studying at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts for some perspective on the country and its people. The two soon became fast friends, and Herge even wanted to give a co-writing credit to Zhang for Tintin and the Blue Lotus, perhaps the most anti-imperialist story he has ever written. While Tintin and the Soviets and his stories on Congo and America had simplistic views of ignorant Africans or American gangsters, the Blue Lotus was a total take down, not just of the Japanese conquest of China, but imperialism as a whole. And Zhang, was immortalized as the young Chinese orphan, Chang Chong-Chen, who helped Tintin through the adventure The Blue Lotus, released in 1934, was a huge success and created quite a stir. Japanese diplomats in Belgium issued an official complaint and even threatened to complain to the Court of International Justice at The Hague. But the publicity only helped the book reach even more readers. Zhang went back to China in 1936 and ended up working as a sweeper during the cultural revolution before having his status as a prominent artist restored after Mao's death in the late seventies. Herge remembered his old friend Chang, famously in Tintin in Tibet in the late 1950s, but actually met him again only years later, in 1981. Zhang received French citizenship in 1989 and settled there, and built a formidable reputation as an artist and sculptor, and his sitters included French President Mitterand. But his claim to immortality will always remain as a young Chinese boy who was the friend of the world famous reporter Tintin.