The Tintin comic series, telling the global adventures of the Belgian boy reporter, are world-renowned, but the reputation of its creator Georges Rémi (better known by his pen-name “Hergé”) has been taking a battering.

In 2007, the centenary of Hergé's birth, the UK Commission for Racial Equality recommended that Tintin in the Congo (1931) be withdrawn from sale due to its “hideous racial prejudice,” as it portrayed the Congolese as kindly but ignorant children in need of the white man’s governance. Chinese characters fared little better in the comics, depicted in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930) and Tintin in America (1932) as dog-eating, pig-tailed thugs.

But just four years after the publication of Tintin in the Land of Soviets, Hergé's The Blue Lotus in saw a complete about-face in the artist's portrayal of Chinese people and culture. First published as a serialized comic strip in 1934, Tintin’s pursuit of a gang of international opium-smugglers through the dens and alleys of Shanghai is a nuanced and underrated dive into the city in the Republican era. Hergé’s detailed pen captures Shanghai’s turbulent politics, secluded opium dens, segregated International settlements, Sikh and British police enforcers, and riotously colorful banner-streaked streets. This U-turn was due to an unlikely friendship with the Chinese artist Zhang Chongren (张充仁), who became Hergé’s mentor and guide.

The Blue Lotus has a remarkably high 9.1 rating on Chinese review app Douban, with readers praising its nuance and sensitivity in portraying 丁丁 (“ding ding”, Chinese for Tintin) standing up for Chinese in the face of Japanese invaders. Although the Tintin adventures don't enjoy the same level of fame in modern China as they do in the West, thousands of reviews have been left on Taobao and JD.com praising Hergé's striking images, funny characters, and engaging plotlines, and for inspiring children to read.

As to why Hergé had decided on China for his next work after Cigars of the Pharaoh (ending in February 1934), he appeared to have little initial curiosity about the country. “I don’t know,” he explained to Zhang at the start of his Blue Lotus project in April 1934, when asked for his reasons for choosing China. “For a change of continent. [Tintin] has already been to Europe, Africa, America, and the Middle East. Never to Asia.”

When Le Petit Vingtième, the newspaper Hergé worked for, announced that Tintin's next adventure was going to take place in China, Father Léon Gosset, chaplain for Chinese students at the University of Louvain, contacted Hergé. Gosset told him of the popularity of the Tintin comic strip with his Chinese students, and how upset they would be if China was treated the same way Congo had been. “The best thing you can do is to find me a Chinese advisor,” Hergé responded.