前门口
Front Atrium.
Our house faces south, which is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, the backyard receives dim northern sun that starves the garden of much needed light in the spring. But on the other hand, our front entrance: a double height atrium with massive windows, sucks in enough light to reach every corner of our house.
By volume, the entrance atrium is one the largest spaces in the house. In exchange for a smaller second floor, our main entrance opens up two floors tall and connects all our hallways together. Since this is what guests always see when they first come in, it has also become a defining characteristic of the house.
Our front door has remained the same since we moved in. The windows are covered with a patterned frosting that confused me for the longest time. I think it was only close to high school when I realized that it was mimicking the shape of feathers. Before that, my childhood mind thought they were giant, man-eating plants not far off from the ones in Plants Vs. Zombies.
Above the doors are the windows: one semicircle-shaped sits directly above them, and a rectangular one sits much higher on top (see figure 4). These let in an incredible amount of light that brightens the entire atrium during anytime of the year. The entrance actually used to be much brighter before we put in the greenhouse terrace, whose roof now blocks any direct sun from entering via the semi-circle window shown here.
1
Chinese culture has a history of placing deities in front of doors to ward away harmful people and spirits. 门神 and guardian lions are examples. I can only guess this was why Mom put two toy dogs up on the entrance windows here. The left is a McDonalds happy meal toy, and the right is a wooden carving whose origins are unknown to me.
2
This floor register sits conveniently beside the shoe cabinet, and often finds itself being used to dry out sweaty or just-washed shoes.
1
This painting is supposed to be oriented landscape, but my parents rotated it 90 degrees and hung it up vertically. I only realized this in high school when my brother pointed out that the signature was in the flipped and in the wrong corner.
2
Besides the toy dogs guarding our front door, we also have these two pieces on a shelf by the entrance. Left is a maneki-neko (“ beckoning cat”) supposed to bring luck, and right is a smiling Budai, thought to bring fortune and happiness. Dad says that adding a few coins to his pot makes him smile more.
3
This last (or first step depending on how you look at it) step was poorly put in and always creaks. When I sneaked into my parent's room to play with my iPad, hearing its creaking when someone stepped on it to come upstairs became my warning call to tiptoe back to my room. Even now I still instinctually skip over it thinking it makes me sneakier than anyone else.
In the winter, the low sun shines right through these windows and covers the entire house with strange geometric shapes. Sometimes a square, other times a rectangle, occasionally even long lines that pierce into the ground floor kitchen hall and the bedrooms upstairs. When the sun is at its lowest and the sky is clear, it hits the chandelier glass on the entrance door, refracts, then scattered as rainbows onto our floors.