January Sun

Burning of the Summer Palace - a short comic

Added 2025-07-02 16:00:07 +0000 UTC

This was a dream I recently had, and it was so funny I had to draw it out!!

This was probably not taught in western history classes, but during the 1800s, France, Britain, and several other countries formed the "Eight Country Alliance" that basically went around trying to colonize (and terrorized) China. I think USA and Japan were part of it too? It's almost like the grandfather of the current western geopolitics, but I digress.

One of the worst, or at least most symbolic and remembered, tragedies of that era, in Chinese history, was the burning of the Summer Palace, which was also known as "Yuanmingyuan". While the European soldiers set fire to everything and looted as much as they could, there were around 300 maids and eunuchs hiding from them in locked rooms, and they all perished in that event.

I dreamed of a maid and a eunuch holding each other in that fire, with the maid tearfully promising the eunuch that she would find him again. I don't know what their relationship was - whether they were childhood friends, platonic soulmates, or a secretly romantic couple - but they felt deeply for each other.

And then my dream skips a thousand years where they're reborn. There is a bunch of worldbuilding detail in this future that I dreamed up, which is not relevant to the story, but the important thing is that when the ex-eunuch (lol) realizes that the scary, big man that always hangs around him is the cute little maid that he had an ambiguous relationship with in that previous life.

I think I was so shocked and amused by this plot twist in my own dream that I woke up, which was such a shame because I wanted to know what happened next! (God, there are so many terrible dick jokes you could make with this situation.)

Anyway, I think it's a really funny story and I had to draw it out. Hope you enjoyed this little comic as much as I did!