#tinyeyescomic

I’m lucky enough to have mostly good experience with hostels. When I was younger, hostels was the place that educates me about different cultures and lives. I never kept in touch with any of the people that I briefly met, but I kept the memories of the moments of true connections.

“A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. The opposite of a snob is your mother. “ It really hits home when I first read this sentence by Alain de Botton. That’s exactly my parents, who are always happy for the smallest thing that I’ve done, even if it’s is simple, unimportant, and far from perfect . They never measure what I do against dominant social values, instead, they care about my growth and cheer for every step that I’ve made in order to get closer to who I am. I’m so grateful.

“Digging to China” is one of the favorite pastimes of American children, which I had never heard of until I arrived at the United States. Parents tell their kids that if they keep digging a hole on the ground, they’ll arrive in China at the other end of the tunnel. Apparently in the UK there’s a similar game, with China replaced by Australia at the other end. I found this game absurdly hilarious and I was curious to know its origin, yet I haven’t found any certain explanations.

According to what I read online, the first prominent mention of the phrase comes in the writing of Henry David Thoreau in the middle of the 19th century. Less than two decades later, a fictional account of engineers reincarnated as beavers spoke of “the projected tunnel to China that was to be built under the sea and lined with porcelain”, before the idea was made into religious education. The joke of digging to China has also appeared in cartoons and animations on TV. There was even a film named Digging to China in 1997.

Seeing the time of its first appearance in literature, I can’t help but wonder if it has a connection with the arrival of the Chinese workers during the California gold rush. Did people first hear about China from the mouth of the Chinese immigrants? Was it because China seemed to be so far away that it was situated “at the other end of the world” in people’s mind?

If you know more about the origin of this game, please share with us!

————————————————————————

This episode is made possible with the support of @ceciliachampenois on Patreon. Thank you❤️

Today I launched my Patreon page. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Patreon is a platform where you can support individual artists on a subscription basis. If you find any joy or value in what I do, please check it out through the link in my bio and consider becoming a Patreon. In return, you get access to the extra content that I’ll be able to create with your support.

I used to feel embarrassed asking for help, because it makes me feel vulnerable, and talking about money somehow turns a creator into a “hypocrite” in many people’s mind, but as time goes, I realized that a project cannot live long without being financially sustainable, and one cannot go far without a community. With your support, I’ll be able to focus on creating comics, do more in-depth content research and less random freelancing, which is taking up a lot of my time and energy. My hope is to be able to continue creating and sharing cultural discoveries with you and never put any ads on this page.