I used to grow them on the windowsill, facing east. The leaves are green to light pink. I would consider that to be in shade because the light comes through the glass.
Now I grow them at my balcony. It faces North-West and is bright the whole day. No direct sunlight until evening, where the sun shines in at an angle. I have a shade cloth to protect them from getting burnt.
They look better with more light! Like this:
Oh yes, back to your questions...the roots are very short and they are protected by the older dead leaves. Usually I would dig a shallow hole, place live sphagnum in it and place the ping on top. As the plant grows, it kind of "grows out" of the hole like what you see above.
The picture on the left also shows the growth of algae in the container. They are easy to repot, or re-container
I should say. Lift the whole plant up and plonk onto the perlite in a new container!
Ahh, water. I water them by gut feel. I am used to how much each container weigh when I lift them up. That's my gauge for watering. But with a clear container like that, you can actually see the water. Fill it up to about 1 cm away from the surface of the perlite column and let the water level go down to about zero before topping up again. At about 2 inches across (like above), they can take even a day short of watering. The older leaves and live sphagnum keep the moisture in around the roots. Sometimes I do neglect them.
Trust me, pings do better drier. All my pings died of rot. Not one died of getting fried or dried!