Lao Tzu Said… (The Blue Lotus)

The Blue Lotus (French: Le Lotus bleu) is the fifth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from August 1934 to October 1935 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1936. Continuing where the plot of the previous story, Cigars of the Pharaoh, left off, the story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are invited to China in the midst of the 1931 Japanese invasion, where he reveals the machinations of Japanese spies and uncovers a drug-smuggling ring.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The video:

This is Tintin project : 051

This project was originally completed on 2025/09/04

The story:

As I’ve mentioned many times before, The Blue Lotus is my favourite adventure. However, one thing always bothered me as a child… the instant insanity brought on by the Rajaijah juice. I won’t say I was exactly scared by it, but there was something unnerving about a juice that could make people crazy. Didi’s turn towards madness and then incessantly – albeit politely – trying to cut off people’s heads… well, it added a lot of tension to the story for me.

Didi runs around a lot saying “Lao Tzu said: “You must find the way!” I’ve found it. You must find it too… So I’m going to cut off your head. Then you’ll know the truth!”

Now, of course there really was a Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu (also known as Laozi), and he arguably did say things like “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t think that murdering ones parents was the best way to “find the way.”

The build:

Not much to say on the “build” aspects of this project.

I did have to get everyone seated and tied to a chair. For Mr. Wang and Tintin that wasn’t much of a problem… but it was for Mrs. Wang… mainly because there are (as far as I know) no 3D models of her that exist and can be adapted for the needs of the project.

That meant I needed to 3D model Mrs. Wang from scratch. Now, I have done that before – mainly for Coco in the Ford Model-T project I did from Tintin in the Congo, but it’s not something I’ve done a lot of. Luckily, besides her head, Mrs. Wang is basically a small, black sausage with two little feet sticking out.

I think I did a passable job of it, but, as always, check out the build below and tell me what you think: