When Your Heart Lives On the Other Side of the World
A comic about homesickness
This short comic idea has been sitting in my Notes app waiting to be realized for at least a year now. I tried to capture the feeling of homesickness and the long-distance longing that I’ve felt my whole life, living oceans away from my extended family.
This feeling hits especially hard weirdly when I’m taking the train. Sitting on an above-ground train in Brooklyn (like the F or Q) specifically at dusk when the train cars are a bit emptier than usual, somehow feels meditative and transportive. Often times I’ve found myself imagining I’m on the Taipei MRT instead.
I’ve been deeply homesick for Taiwan and especially Taipei, my favorite city in the world, because my last visit was at the end of 2019. A global pandemic, family emergencies, work commitments and mismatched schedules. Somehow it’s been five years. So much has changed in my own life, and I wonder what Taipei is like now.
For most of my life I’ve visited Taiwan with my parents and my brother to see my mom’s side of the family. Rarely have I ever gotten the chance to visit Taiwan on my own, to explore and to try to understand the root of my longing and nostalgia.
I was able to force myself to pull this comic out of my drafts folder because I’ll finally be going back to Taiwan next week. At least for a little while I’ll be able to tamp down on my homesickness. I want to take in as much as I can and rediscover what Taiwan means to me as an adult independent of my family (of course I love that version of Taiwan too). I’m excited and honestly a bit nervous! It feels like seeing an old friend again for the first time in a long time. Will I still recognize her? Will she recognize me?
This year has been really difficult and I’m looking forward to being able to finally take a breath and hopefully feel more like myself while on this trip. There’s no place I’d rather run away to for a restorative journey than this lush, green gem of an island 💚
I wanted to give a loving shoutout to the train nerds who upload train station announcements and full MRT ride videos––without you I couldn’t have made this comic! If you happen to enjoy ambient, transportive public transport content, you’re welcome:
What a beautiful comic, @Christina Chung. It touches on this ache to be and connect with family on the other side of the globe so well. 🥲 I last visited Japan 13 years ago and that’s almost unbelievable to me! (I was set to go in spring 2020, but of course that trip was cancelled.)
I wonder what it would be like to navigate and get reacquainted with a place I think about every day—one that holds some of my sweetest memories yet surely has changed just as much as I have.
You must be so excited to return to Taiwan! Wishing you a lovely trip full of comfort, wonder, and precious stories to retell through your illustrations and words.
Beautiful. It reminds me of a recurring dream I have where the underground network of London and Warsaw and somehow connected. I get on in Hendon in north-west London where I live and get off in Imielin in southern Warsaw where my mum lives