He was heavily influenced by his close friend Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student studying in Belgium, and the work both satirises common European misconceptions about China as well as criticising the actions of the Japanese invaders.

The Blue Lotus was a commercial success in Belgium and was soon serialised in France and Switzerland, while news of the book led to the Chinese political leader Chiang Kai-shek inviting Hergé to visit China itself.

In 1946, The Blue Lotus was partially re-drawn and coloured by the cartoonist and his team of assistants; during this process a number of minor plot elements were changed.

The visitor supplies him with the name of Mitsuhirato, a Japanese businessman based in Shanghai while on secondment, but before finishing his message is hit by a dart dipped in Rajaijah, the "poison of madness".

Meanwhile, Tintin enters the Shanghai International Settlement in search for Professor Fang Hsi-ying, an expert on poisons who he hopes can develop a cure for Rajaijah, but discovers that he has been kidnapped.

[2] Travelling to Hukow to search for Fang, Tintin comes across a flood that has caused extensive damage, and rescues a young Chinese orphan Chang Chong-Chen from drowning.

Being held prisoner at The Blue Lotus, he discovers that Mitsuhirato is in league with the film director Rastapopoulos, who reveals that he is the leader of the international opium smuggling gang that Tintin has been pursuing in Egypt, Arabia, India, and now China.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

His students read Le Petit Vingtième and he thought it would be counterproductive if Hergé continued to propagate negative stereotypes about the Chinese people.

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 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.

[30] 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.

[31] However, The Blue Lotus contained no mention of one of the central historical events of the period, the Long March of communist Mao Zedong.

[33] 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.

[39] 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.

"[43] 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.

[42] 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".

[44] 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.

[27] 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.

[50] They compared the scene in which the Japanese invaded China with that in Tintin in America where the U.S. army force Native Americans off their land, and praised the linear illustrations of the story, although also opined that the original black-and-white version was better than its colour counterpart.

[58] Harry Thompson noted that some people believed that Hergé's depiction of the Japanese as buck-toothed and inherently violent in The Blue Lotus was racist.

[60] Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline thought that the book combined "social realism" with the spirit present in the work of Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas.

[62] Also feeling that the work was "exceptionally moving,"[14] he noted that The Blue Lotus was far from Tintin in the Congo in its attitude to non-Europeans, while other Belgian comic strips like Blake and Mortimer and Buck Danny would continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes of East Asians for decades.

[64] Michael Farr stated that there was a "general agreement" that The Blue Lotus was Hergé's first masterpiece, being "better planned" than its predecessors and for the first time having "a carefully devised structure".

[67] Literary critic Tom McCarthy thought that The Blue Lotus showed evidence of Hergé's "left-wing counter-tendency" that rejected his earlier right-wing worldview.

[68] He believed that this was partly due to the influence of Zhang, who had destroyed Hergé's "European absolutism", and overall thought of it as "the most visually rich of all the Tintin books".

[71] The Blue Lotus was adapted into a 1991 episode of The Adventures of Tintin television series by French studio Ellipse and Canadian animation company Nelvana.