Oops! - Bloopers and Sadness for Comics Industry

Born in Shanghai in 1905, Chang wrote and decorated movie sets before pursuing sculpture in 1931 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium.

He and Herge were introduced by a chaplain for Chinese students, who urged Herge to be more sensitive about portraying a China occupied by Japanese and Western powers.

In "The Blue Lotus," published in 1934 and set in Shanghai in 1931, Tintin rescues Chang from the Yangtze River and they become friends. Chang denounces Western colonizers and encourages the boycott of Japanese goods, which brought protests from Japanese diplomats in Brussels.

From 1966-76, Chang lived in China, and during the Cultural Revolution Herge's comic strips were branded "bourgeois imperialism."

For years Chang was reduced to a street sweeper, though in the mid-70s he was appointed director of the Fine Arts Academy of Shanghai.

In 1981, Culture Minister Jack Lang invited Chang to return to France. Chang was later commissioned to sculpt the bust of Francois Mitterrand after the president's re-election in 1988.

More than 154 million copies of Tintin books have been sold worldwide, translated in 50 languages.

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