Seeing Light in the Cracks: A Personal Encounter That Shook Me
Principal Lo Ka-keung, Liming Catholic High School ── A Visit to 3 Door Hotel
March 2026 · West Central District, Tainan
[A word from 3 Door]We have always believed that a hotel should be more than a space for a brief stay: it should be a place that passes on warmth, culture and a feeling for living. We are deeply grateful to Principal Lo Ka-keung of Liming Catholic High School for visiting 3 Door Hotel and leaving us this heartfelt piece, full of poetry and depth. It is not only an endorsement of our work but a perfect articulation of the founding wish we hold for every traveller: that you come home safely.
An encounter that shook me. Not an art museum, not a cultural centre — and yet inside a design hotel I saw the culture of the Tainan home.
Walking along Chenggong Road in Tainan, I arrived at the entrance of3 Door Hotel, where understated yet richly textured cypress doors stand quietly. Before even stepping inside, you can smell something woven from the humanistic and the natural, as though you were being invited to slow down.
Crossing into a corridor laid with hexagonal tiles, what you enter is not merely a hotel but something closer to a deep question about space and about living — what is the harmony of a hexagon?
Just inside on the right stands a cypress cabinet built up out of memory, and in an instant you are drawn down a tunnel of time. It looks exactly like the old cabinet at my grandmother’s house, holding bowls and plates and the secrets of many years, not to be opened lightly, yet releasing a familiar nostalgia into the air. That scent of memory begins quietly at the very door.
The idea behind 3 Door is simple yet profound:
the first door is the front gate; the second is the door of the home; the third is the door of your room.
When you push open that third door, it means you have come home safely.
It is a harbour where a tired body can moor, and a place where the mind can settle. Inside these rooms the curiosity and imagination of childhood seem to have been tucked away, sewn like a quilt with a grandmother’s warmth and a mother’s embrace.
The welcoming tortoise of hexagonal copper tiles, a symbol of nobility and long life, quietly blesses everyone who comes and goes. The slowness here is not contrived; it is a gentleness that simply flows out. To every traveller pausing briefly, 3 Door offers the cleanest and most reassuring place to rest, as it would to family. Through the hall the echo of smiles keeps circulating — the sound of the most sincere care that can pass between people.
General manager Tiffany Li, starting out in luxury residential architecture, has kept turning over a single question:in what kind of space can a person truly set down their happiness? And how do you soothe a weary traveller so that everyone who walks through the door can hand themselves over to this place without worry?
The answer is hidden in every detail.
Night lights and audio that never glare, open wardrobes, breathable mattress protectors thickened by 10 centimetres to support the lower back, playful bath towels folded into penguins and elephants… every design carries thoughtfulness and warmth. Every room has a washlet, the bidet nozzles disinfected with premium non-toxic cleaner, and even the overflow holes of the basins are kept spotless. Inverted body-wash dispensers, imported fittings reinforced against tampering, eco-friendly materials recycled the moment they are finished with, and independent air conditioning — your own air is yours alone. Even the return-air dust covers, in use for seventeen years, remain without a speck.
Ms Li crouched down herself and ran her hand over the finer corners of the toilet and the basin. Without complete confidence in her housekeeping, no one would risk such an unannounced gesture of indulging a guest. It is less a service than the founding instinct of treating travellers as family. None of the facilities burden the body, and none harm the environment.
The meeting spaces on B1 and the eighth floor, laid out with cypress tables and chairs, offer another answer. The phytoncides released over the years settle the mind and clear the thoughts, so meetings become more focused and more productive — because the directions decided there are a microcosm of the future, and using only the finest materials is itself a principle of running this business.
This is a design hotel, and yet it is not only a design hotel.
Those who have visited will remember that Tainan holds a hotel that feels like a home; and they will remember the gentle stretch of time they spent pausing here. Every opening door brings the feeling of coming home.
When the lift doors part, the cultural imagery of Tainan comes straight at you, and the emotion of that first glance carries all the way through to the moment your room door opens. Deeper feeling is hidden where you cannot see it: air, temperature, building materials and energy are all handled with care and gentleness.
Anyone who walks in has not merely toured a space; they have sat through a lesson — a lesson about sustainability and about how we perceive daily life. That experience continues into ordinary days long after leaving.
The eighth floor is a striking presence.
Beyond its bright, generous space, it preserves the glass that shattered in the earthquake. Layer upon layer of resin wraps the wounds. That is the memory of 11 February, and also a chance to learn from nature.
Those cracks are not simply breakage; they are more like a tea egg whose shell has split — it is precisely because there are cracks that deeper flavour can seep in. They remind us that every decision, imperfect as it may be, can still become nourishment for growth. Life does not stand still; it moves forward while carrying the tremors. So we must be more careful, and treasure every breath of air more. Natural disasters cannot be avoided: however refined the architecture, it may crack; however solid the world, it will shake. But some things crack without shattering.
I saw Ms Li’s insistence on detail — the crystallisation of culture that has settled over time, and the founding instinct to run a hotel as a home for living. The warmth and safety of home do not depend on how large a space is, but on the culture and feeling held within it. Sitting under the reading lamp in the corner, turning the pages of a book about my own memories, the scent of coffee rising slowly from a small round table — in that moment, happiness was quietly present.
Life may be like that shattered glass: cut through, deformed. But you can choose to keep it, to let light pass through the cracks and cast richer layers across the imperfection. It looks less than whole, and yet it comes closer to the truth of living.
The caption on the photograph read:
“Creation speaks no word, yet it feels; each time the cold runs out, spring is sensed again;
a thousand reds and ten thousand purples are already arranged, waiting only for the first clap of new thunder.”
And I understood: what people mean by breakage bringing peace is not the absence of cracks,
but still seeing light within them.
Through architecture and space, 3 Door has written a moving story about life.
In that story there is you, and there is me.
You need not be flawless. Even as the world shakes,
you can still choose to believe that light comes in through the cracks;
and that people, too, can learn to live again inside them.
About 3 Door Hotel: Q&A
👇 Read Principal Lo’s original Facebook post and the responses to it 👇
Every opening door brings the feeling of coming home.
Come and feel the culture and beauty of the Tainan home for yourself
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