Chong-Chen Chang is a fictional character that has become central to the Tintin Mythos, despite only ever appearing in two albums. He is perhaps the boy reporter's dearest friend, and is the only character for whom Tintin ever sheds a tear.
Created by Hergé in 1934 for the The Blue Lotus, in which Tintin helps the Chinese fight their Japanese occupiers, Chang shares his name with Chang Chong-chen, a real-life friend of Herge's, who the young cartoonist had met in the same year. A Chinese sculpture student studying in Brussels, the real-life Chang taught Hergé Eastern art techniques, as well as informing him of the political situation in China. As a result the Blue Lotus is the first overtly political Tintin book, and the first to feature the meticulously detailed and researched backgrounds for which Hergé would later become famous. In it, Chang appears as a young orphan who Tintin saves from drowning and befriends.
The character later appeared in Tintin in Tibet, which concerns Tintin and Haddock's mission to find Chang in the Himalayas when his plane crashes. The book is perhaps Hergé's most deeply personal. When he wrote it, he had not seen the real-life Chang for several decades.
The two Tintin albums in which Chang appears have become favorites to many of Hergé's adult fans.
