Hergé became a meticulous researcher of locations after receiving criticism:
Up to the writing of The Blue Lotus, Hergé's writing was mainly based on popular prejudice and on what his mentor, the abbot Norbert Wallez, had told him. Tintin was published in a newspaper, and Hergé announced at the end of Cigars that his next setting would be China.
Father Gosset, the chaplain to the Chinese students at the University of Louvain, wrote to Hergé urging him to be sensitive about what he wrote about China. Hergé agreed, and in the spring of 1934 Gosset introduced him to Chang Chong-chen, a young sculpture student at the Brussels Académie des Beaux-Arts. The two young artists quickly became close friends, and Chang introduced Hergé to Chinese history, culture, and the techniques of Chinese art.
As a result of this experience, Hergé would strive in The Blue Lotus, and in subsequent Tintin adventures, to be meticulously accurate in depicting the places which Tintin visited. He reached this meticulousness by painstakingly researching all his topics. When his UK publisher complained that The Black Island depicted an old-fashioned England, Hergé sent Bob de Moor - a longtime collaborator of Hergé's - across the North-Sea to redraw anything that was no longer accurate, resulting in huge changes to the album. This new-found accuratesse would become a Hergé trade mark.
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