This is the Master Bedroom, which I like to think of as a room of swirling China blue.

Our mother, Li Li, made the accent on these curtains by the window.

"I bought the curtains, but something felt like it was missing," she said. "So I added the blue lace accents. Do you like it?"

My mother sounds like a little girl when she asks me questions like these. Of course, I love it.

(Please imagine something with me for a second: imagine my brother, Peter, making my mother's bed so that he can take these shots, and then un-making it as best he can. We pulled off some covert ops.)

In the master bath, you can see a window that is the union of a rectangle and an oval atop of it (I do not know the name for this shape).

"I started with the idea of pleated gold curtains with a dark gold tassel," my mother explained to me once, "but it didn't look quite right draped atop the window. So I did my own thing, but it was still missing something. I put the tassel above. How does it look?"

I was in awe, because my mother is a master of furniture jazz improvisation.