A Beginning: Renovating a House Turned Me Back into an Artsy Young Woman

Lately, because of the pandemic, I've been forced to work remotely and renovate a house at the same time. Yet another field I knew nothing about. From making an XMind map to interview designers, to feng shui (seriously), to circulation, lighting and style, to choosing an elevator — every step is a whole new discipline, and I've been learning it all with total infatuation.

The house is in a residential compound in the old part of town, more than 20 years old. It's neither an old building with character nor a new luxury home. But somehow it makes us happy.

Maybe it's because of how fiercely alive it is.

From the start, the garden had a starfruit tree and a longan tree. None of us knew anything about farming and we hardly tended them, yet every year they gave everyone incredibly sweet fruit. These days, around August, my mom has to fly back, climb a tall ladder herself, and chop the longans down — branches, leaves and all — with big shears, to send to family and friends. Later, a papaya seed from who knows where took root and sprouted in our yard without asking permission; by the time we noticed, it was two stories tall and covered in fruit, which left us both exasperated and amused. Not to mention the bougainvillea outside the yard in the compound, which grows with total abandon — in summer, when you sit in the shade of its vines, the sunlight is blocked out completely.

It's all so vibrantly alive that it's adorable.

It truly deserves to be treated well, so recently I've switched into "immersive renovation" mode. For the sake of renovating the house, I've been visiting Xiamen's museums to learn the cultural history behind the house; touring old Western-style villas on the island and taking hundreds of photos of styles, colors and patterned tiles; and wandering into little streets and alleys to watch how people live.

I want to know why this city, and its people along with it, have such a lovable temperament. And through getting to know this city, I also want to come closer to my mom and the childhood home in her memories.

I want to know: in that early Northeastern city that didn't even have a McDonald's, what was she thinking when she taught me to use a knife and fork and to savor coffee?

I want to know: in her memories of my grandparents secretly humming Teresa Teng songs at home during the Cultural Revolution, what kind of beautiful time was that?

I want to know: when she was little and the three siblings had to take turns as a "human egg beater" for four hours, beating eggs until their arms nearly fell off just to eat a homemade cake — was it fragrant and sweet?

I want to know: if we put our hearts into it, can a house, and the beautiful times with family, be like a gramophone — carrying a vintage melody that takes us back to a place of comfort for the soul?

A few days ago, I was chatting with American friends, hearing artist and architect friends' suggestions for this renovation. The more we talked, the more excited we got — from Nanyang style to the history of overseas Chinese, from Matisse to the Mexican master architect Barragán. When I described what I'd been thinking and feeling during the renovation, they encouraged me to write the process down. That suggestion moved me instantly. It really is a warm, touching experience. So I plan to spend a bit more time writing about this inner journey —

writing about how it's made me think about the relationships within a family;

writing about the human care in renovation;

writing about how, faced with so many breathtaking design styles, I went from "dazzled by choice" to "taking just one ladle from the river";

writing a log of my patterned-tile hunts;

writing about what to watch out for in renovating for older people;

maybe even writing about applying the "negotiation" I studied last year while buying the main materials? 🤔️

Unlike the renovation of the A Study, where we had a clear template — the Saint James hotel in Paris, the elegance and sophistication of French Art Deco, an unrivaled classic, where the closer we got to it the better — this time there's no concrete image at all. What keeps surfacing in my mind is that beautiful time, my warm and lovable family, the way a beam of afternoon sunlight falls from the yard into the dining room, a teapot full of tea stains and gloves caked with soil in the garden, a house that can breathe along with my mom.

It won't stay the same forever, and it doesn't need to be meticulous.

The cabinets will hold all the bowls and plates she loves, and the living room will have a KTV booth for her singing practice, a mahjong table for get-togethers, a drum kit and a piano. It doesn't need to be orderly; there's no need to force yourself for the sake of outward beauty.

Because life is already beautiful enough.

(Time's up for today, I need to go read. I'll stop here for now — once you've made a beginning, there's no turning back)

On the floor of the hotel room: the patterned-tile samples I've been choosing lately.