Survey opium trafficking

Tintin and his faithful Snowy are the guests of the Maharaja of Rawhajpoutalah in the palace which they pay well deserved holiday period. In recent days, the young reporter is working to capture messages on a wireless telegraphy apparatus. He finally received what he expected but it remains encrypted. At the time, Tintin can decrypt and strives to find meaning.

After a brief interview with the Maharajah who desired to submit the fakir Cipaçalouvishni and after the latter, which has the gift of clairvoyance, announced that a man he thought dead was preparing his revenge, one of the servants s advance with Tintin to tell him that a stranger came specially from Shanghai waits in the palace gallery. During the meeting, the individual in question informs him that he has important things to tell him, but at the moment he is about to do it, a dart at radjaïdjah, poison-who-rend- crazy, the hit in the neck. He only had time to say a few words: "Mitsuhirato ... We need you ... I ... Shanghai ... Remember this name: Mitsuhirato ... Mitsu ... Mitsuhirato ... "before going insane.

Tintin now understand that mysterious case waits in Shanghai and decided to go there immediately ...

Hergé, however, offers us through this plot a set of adventures that Tintin convenes strategist qualities in the context of the Japanese occupation in China. The young reporter is evolving in a city, Shanghai, then under the yoke of Japanese military authorities and marked by the presence of the international concession, born in 1863 from the merger of British and American concessions. The author portrays an investigator perfectly integrated to the Chinese people that operates in all environments, trying each time to separate truth from fiction. The plot revolves around the "Blue Lotus", a den frequented by many tourists and that proves to be the hub of a major opium trade, global. Finally, this episode is part of a new meeting that will count in the emotional life and the friendships Tintin network, that of Chang Chong-Jen, but also that of a new confrontation against the evil Rastapopoulos already present in Cigars of the Pharaoh "Rastapopoulos, who fell in the rocks near Rawhajpoutalah, and you thought dead ...!"