Hergé (1907-1983) was the Belgian creator of the world famous
comic-book character Tintin.
In his celebrated book, The Blue Lotus, he tells of the
friendship between Tintin and his Chinese friend, Chang. This year
marks the 20th anniversary of Hergé's death and the event evoked
many Belgians' memories of the story.
Hergé, whose real name was Georges Rémi, was born into a working
class family in Brussels, May 22, 1907. Rémi was known to be
brilliant and obsessed with painting from a young age. Upon his
graduation from middle school, Rémi became an employee with the
newspaper, Le Vingtième Siècle. In 1926, he began to draw
his first popular work The Adventures of Totor and adopted
the penname Hergé. From January 1929, the story of the journalist
Tintin, the best-known comic-book character he created, was
serialized weekly on double pages of the newspaper. Hergé's fame
grew as Tintin gained popularity near and afar.
In 1934, to prepare for the story of Tintin's journey to the Far
East, Hergé met and made friends with a young Chinese student,
Chang Chong-Chen (1905-1998), who was studying in the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven. The two artists, of nearly the same age, later
spent over one year together. His friendship with Chang helped
Hergé to remold his opinions of the Chinese people and he felt
strongly that he was obliged to help other Europeans eliminate
their discrimination against China.
"Chang" is the only real-life person in the Tintin adventure
series. Hergé represented his immense interests and compassion of
China in the series, for the first time enabling numerous
westerners to acquaint themselves with the Orient country. Critics
say The Blue Lotus is Hergé's most realistic and
courageous work and therefore his most successful creation. Chang
had returned to China before The Blue Lotus was published
and lost contact with Hergé after that.
During WWII, Hergé continued his career working for the
newspaper Le Soir. He had to curtail his work to avoid
sensitive political issues of the period.
Hergé embraced his hay day of creative work and he, and Tintin,
became world celebrities after the war had ended. Again, to evade
post-war press censorship, Hergé brought Tintin to the moon and
some imaginary lands, in a way actually adding truthfulness to his
work and winning more readers including adults as well as
children.
In 1979, the retired Hergé said that he was always happy because
his interests in telling stories through drawing pictures remained.
He also said he only discovered very late that Tintin was
autobiographical and that he had placed all his heroic dreams on
the character.
In 1981 Hergé and Chang Chong-Chen, already a successful artist
and sculptor by then, were reunited in Brussels after 46 years. On
March 25, 1981, Belgian national TV broadcast the happy scene of
Hergé and Chang meeting again. The program was rebroadcast on March
15 this year in Belgium.
On March 3, 1983, Hergé died. Fifteen years later, Chang
Chong-Chen died. However, their everlasting friendship still lives
on in the hearts of billions of readers of Hergé's work, translated
now into 58 languages around the world.
Some Danish directors are currently shooting a film on Hergé and
Chang's friendship in Brussels.
(Guangming Daily, August 25, 2003, translated by Chen
Chao for china.org.cn, September 4, 2003)