From China's bamboo forest villages in Yunnan to the high-rises of Shanghai, Mongolian Cow Yogurt Super Girl—a hugely popular American Idol-like TV program—has created quite a stir. And when Li Yuchun, a music student with a tomboy haircut and girl next-door beauty, won the coveted title, she spawned a new short and edgy hairstyling craze among young girls living across the vast expanse of Mainland China.
Super Girl also created a significant shift among young Chinese girls who previously never wore a definitive hairstyle before they turned 18. Today a 15-year-old Chinese girl may wear a fashion-forward, sometimes even exaggerated, hairstyle. China's passion for beauty and fashion is also being influenced both near and far, driving a new wave of ideas across cultural and financial boundaries.

Please read more on the LaunchPad (PDF file)...

"Islands with islands, sunsets after sunsets, surfs are washing your memory away." An ancient Chinese poet wrote this when he looked out over the sea from an island. Maybe, the memory had been washed away but not the lighthouses. If you are at the place where the poet stood hundred years ago, you will catch the sight of a 135-year-old lighthouse, though the memories associated with it might have faded away long ago.
Hundreds of miles south-eastward from Shanghai, in the latitude of 30.85 degrees north and 122.67 degrees east, there is a small flowery and bird-shaped island we call the Flower Bird Island, which sits in the top north of the Zhoushan Islands — the biggest archipelago in China.
It was in early June 2005, after sailing through billows and landing at the foot of a hill in the island when we arrived at our destination.
As I reached the top of the hill, nearly worn out, a distinctive lighthouse amazed me, not only for its thick and sturdy appearance, but also for its height of 16.5 meters and width of six meters, and also for the distinctive black-and-white coat of paint. Almost the top three quarters of the lighthouse is black, the other quarter is white.
The lighthouse, which the indigenes call the Flower Bird Lighthouse, is a navigated mark of entrance to Yangtse River. It has stood there since 1870, but incomprehensibly, in most of its past, it doesn't belong to China but to the Great Britain, a country 10,000 miles away from China. Is this a fruit of international cooperation or globalization? No.
Those who are familiar with the Asian history of the 19th century know the truth: the lighthouse is a fossil of the Empire Without a Sunset. After two wars between the Chinese Qing Empire and Great Britain in the 1840s and 1860s, the failed former had to open its ports and cede maritime rights to the latter. So the English built the lighthouse and inhabited the area in the following decades until it was taken over by the Japanese in World War II. The lighthouse finally came back to China's control after Japan was defeated in 1945.
The lower half of the lighthouse, including the first two floors, looks like a blockhouse with high and small windows, and there is an annular balcony in the third floor. The fourth floor has a vaulted loft with broad and bright glass windows.
After putting on clean chinelas, we stepped into the lighthouse and walked up along the four-floor cockle stairs.
I saw an enormous combined bull's-eye lens at once when
I reached the lantern room. The lens, which was constituted by four independent lenses assembled by eight loops of crystalline glass prisms, has its boastful diameter of 1.84 meters and was once regarded as the biggest lens in the far east.
The lens rotates one revolution every 60 seconds, and its light can reach an extent of 24 sea miles in its altitude of 89 meters. But if you look carefully at the surface of the lens, you could find some nicks on it. The master told us that the nicks were caused by bullets when the Japanese took over the lighthouse in the World War II.
He also said that because this type of lens is no longer manufactured, it is irreplaceable. Fortunately, the nicks do not affect the function of the light, so the lighthouse continues its duty even after 100 years of threats by storms and history.
A horrent tale, which was told by an indigene, said that eight natives were killed and buried under the groundwork of the lighthouse just before it was set up. Although the saga's authenticity might be left to doubt, it seemed that the collision between the indigenes and the immigrants never stopped since the latter inhabited the island. How many skirmishes of hatred have been witnessed by the lighthouse? I don't know. But when I turned my head, watching through the glass windows of the gigantic lantern room,
I saw a steamship passing through the skyline of the Pacific within eyeshot, then I thought, maybe all those animosities are not important but the responsibility and devotion to the lighthouse, and maybe, all the sad bygones have been bygones, just like the surfs lashing the coast and washing the memory away.
Opening a guidebook about the lighthouse, I found its glorious history. Constructed in 1870, the light, which had four thick wicks and used rap oil, went into operation. In 1899, the light was improved and was burning with kerosene by its six wicks. In 1923, a diaphone was installed and the sailors can hear its whistle 5–10 miles away. In 1989, the automatic oil transporting system was completed and the history of oil heavers was over. Although all of its stories can't be compressed into one short article, as you know, many things could have happened in a long period such as 135 years.
When we took the boat and left the island, my friend Icy looked a little sentimental. She said that while I was wallowing in the spectacular beauty from the outside balcony of the lantern room, the master had told her a story about a former keeper. The hero of the story retired just two years ago and still lives on the island. Forty years ago, when he was a young man just beginning his work here, his wife and his four-year-old daughter came to visit him, but the ship was lost at sea and he never saw them again. I thought, maybe, that is just one of the many sad stories the lighthouse has buried deeply in its heart.
When I looked up, the sun glows were bestrewing the sky at dusk, and the light of the Flower Bird Lighthouse was lit up. Suddenly, it seemed that I grasped the meaning of this image, maybe, just like its statuesque figure on the background of the sky in the past 135 years. The lighthouse is a post-house between island and island, a messenger between sunset and sunset and a prophet between memory and memory.
The Flower Bird Lighthouse has been imbedded into my memory and would never be washed away.
(The author is a Chinese freelance journalist and writer.)

China's Guangdong Linux Center (GDLC) and 27 universities last month set up the Guangdong Leadership of Open Source University Promotion Alliance (GDLUPA) to promote Linux in China's universities.

The GDLUPA founded several Linux Practical Bases, which are learning centers for the university students. "The students will proliferate Linux to the whole country after their graduation," Lo Sanlu, an official in the GDLUPA, said. He also said that the mission of the GDLUPA is to associate with the universities, promote Linux teaching and research, train new Linux programmers, and establish a university promotion system conducted by the Guangdong government.

Guangdong's is not China's first Linux university promotion alliance. In June, the Zhengjiang Linux Center (ZJLC) and more than 70 universities set up the country's first Leadership Of Open Source University Promotion Alliance (LUPA), which established a new open source community, Lupaworld, three months later.

The emergence of the LUPAs and new open source communities is a response to China's new Linux tactic. Shortly after I finished my article China's Linux Disease, Chen Wei, the manager of the Linux Public Service Project Department (LPSPD) in China's Ministry of Information Industry, held a serial of lectures in several universities in Beijing, admitting in public that China's Linux industry was really "diseased." He also said that the government was changing its Linux tactic and "inclining from Linux companies to the open source communities."

This is a significant announcement for China's Linux industry. At the beginning of its Linux journey, the Chinese government tried to invest directly in Linux companies, but soon gave up and turned to subsidizing the companies by governmental procurements or other indirect investment. Now the government has decided to resort to the open sources communities.

But which open source communities the government will "incline to"? Chen Wei stated clearly in his lectures that they are those communities with governmental backing. He also said that China will reward the companies that donate to or cooperate with the open source communities chosen by the government.

The Guangdong government last year invested $3.75 million to set up the GDLC to offer a free public testing platform for Linux companies and communities. The GDLC gave birth to the GDLUPA, and the GDLUPA set up a new open source community and is ready to be "inclined to" by the government.

The new agency is a target of censure by companies and communities without governmental background. "What I want to know is not where the government will incline to, but how it will incline," said Li Jin, a programmer who is concerned about open source communities. "If it can play as a fair propeller to the market, and if the new tactic can reduce the inequities or dark businesses in the industry, or if our nongovernmental communities can get any chances to be inclined to."

Unfortunately, the government doesn't seem to envision this reality. Frustrated by the behavior of the government in past years, the China Software Industry Association (CSIA) published a report on its investigation of the intellectual property issues concerning open source and business software in October, which showed that the government's partialities and inequities had disordered the software market. The report concludes that "the government should not support or intervene in business software anymore."

The investigation was regarded as a confrontation to the government's tactic and soon blasted by the government's favorites. An executive of Red Flag Software said that he "suspected" that the investigation may be conducted by some business software companies who "have evil intentions" and asserted that the investigation was "spreading dread by these companies." Ni Guang Nan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), also said that the tactic of Chinese government in software industry was "fruitful" in the past years, and criticized that the investigation "have ulterior motives."

Chen Chong, the secretary-general of the CSIA, said that criticisms of the investigation are totally hypothetical and groundless, "But I will take the responsibility for this investigation."

China's new tactic no doubt can help to popularize Linux in the country, but if it continues to exclude companies and open source communities without governmental backing, the industry will still be a paradise for talentless government favourites and will not recover from its "disease."

As more and more traditional publishers accept digital images, artists are turning to free and open source software (FOSS) tools to create cartoons and illustrations.

Draw lines

Both vector and bitmap drawing programs let you draw lines. Generally speaking, vector lines are more reusable and revisable, while bitmap lines are more artistic.

Before starting a drawing in any tool, plan how many layers your drawing will have. A simple bitmap drawing may have only three or four layers, such as a background, a character, and a car. A vector drawing may have more layers; even a single property in your drawing may have several layers. Using layers can make it easier for you to revise your drawing or reuse it in another drawing in the future.

When drawing lines with a bitmap program, you'll need a good pen tablet, such as one from Wacom. (Check out Nathan Willis's article on how to get started with Wacom tablets in Linux.) Open source applications such as the GIMP (for Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac) and Paint.NET (for Windows only) offer line tools such as a pencil, a paintbrush, and an airbrush. You can adjust settings such as the brush width, fill style, antialiasing mode, and blending mode, and save your favorite brushes for future use.

One of the major benefits of vector lines is that you can revise them easily. FOSS tools for vector graphics include Inkscape (for Windows, Linux, and Mac), Xara Xtreme for Linux, and Skencil (for Linux or Unix).

If a vector drawing has too many layers, you can combine several finished layers into a group to make the scene simpler. In Inkscape, for example, you can group the layers by navigating to Object -> Group. If you want to edit the group again, simply double-click it or navigate to Object -> Ungroup.

You can also convert a bitmap image to a vector image by using Inkscape's trace bitmap tool (Shift-Alt-B). This technique is useful for artistic portraits. For example, you could create a caricature portrait by importing a photo and converting it to vector lines. You could then transform the vector lines by using the editing nodes tool (F2), then make the jaw bigger, the cheek bone higher, the lips thicker, and so on.

Color your drawings

Coloring vector and bitmap images is relatively simple. If you want to color a vector image in a bitmap program, first export the image as a bitmap. Paint.Net's Paint Bucket and GIMP's Bucket Fill tools offer dozens of patterns for bitmap coloring. You can also use the line tools to draw colored patterns.

In the GIMP, you can color images on the same or a different layer. Using a different layer may take more time, but it allows you to revise the colors or the lines separately in the future.

You can color bitmap images in vector programs (for example, drawing lines in Paint.Net but adding colors in Xara Xtreme for Linux) to create special effects, but the process is more complicated because you need to draw more vector shapes to contain the colors first.

Properties and background

Google SketchUp can help you draw properties and backgrounds quickly. With the line, rectangle, circle, and arc tools, you can draw objects and a background simply by dragging the cursor through three-dimensional coordinates. Google SketchUp offers more than 100 materials, including brick and cladding, wood, stone, tile, vegetation, carpets, and water. Sketchy Effects helps you create a hand-painted effect on your drawing. If you find that SketchUp's style is just what you need, you can export your work directly as a bitmap file and put it in a layer of your drawing program, or revise it in another drawing program.

Other FOSS tools can help you create properties as well. For example, you can use the emboss tool in Paint.Net to create an embossed artwork as a property in a scene. You can also simply create a rectangle and fill it with colors and patterns to make a background.

Improve, polish, and send out your drawing

Editors usually accept JPG files because of their relatively small size compared to other kinds of graphics files. Before exporting your drawing as a JPG file, see how your image looks in its compressed form. You may need to revise some of the layers. For example, if a background layer is too glaring, you can darken or blur it. You can also use Paint.Net or the GIMP to give your work an artistic effect. For example, you can make your work look like a pencil drawing by going to Effects -> Pencil in Paint.Net.

Set the compression of the exported JPG file to allow for good image quality and definition. Choose a JPG quality of 85 to 95%. The definition of the exported file should be at least 300 dots per inch for a magazine, meaning that a 4-by-3-inch illustration in a magazine needs a digital image that is at least 1,200-by-900 pixels.

Conclusion

The powerful functions offered by FOSS drawing programs can not only help you to present your digital artworks, but can also help you to improve your artistic skills and improve your visibility in the art world.

2,500 years ago, the Chinese philosopher Confucius asked Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, "What is Tao?" Lao-tzu opened his mouth but said nothing. Confucius left with a smile, but his students were puzzled. Confucius explained, "Lao-tzu has passed us the Tao. In his mouth, there are no teeth but only a tongue. The hard ones (teeth) died, but the soft one (the tongue) lives; the soft power is stronger than the hard power. That's the Tao!"

Open source is such a soft power. "Soft power is like water," Lao-tzu explained in his book, Tao Te Ching. A single water drop is powerless, but numerous water drops are torrential. Likewise, a single open source participant counts for little, but numerous participants make the open source community strong. Traditional software, on the other hand, is a hard power, like teeth. One big tooth can be strong (take Microsoft, for example), but teeth fall out as time goes by.

Soft power remains weaker than hard

Currently, traditional software remains more important in the software industry. According to Taoism, the reason may be time. Open source is still a new industry and needs to let more "water drops" in. Many good open source projects don't have enough supporters yet. For example, the 3-D rendering software YafRay had a difficult year in 2006 because "original developers did not have more time to collaborate actively in the YafRay development" (see "YafRay Next Generation"). Factors such as lack of development tools and piracy impede developers from getting into the open source industry.

According to a Taoism precept, continual water drops drill through a stone, while hard teeth break in front of the stone. If the water drops aren't enough to form a torrent, they may need more time to drill through the stone. Likewise, in the open source world, YafRay almost ended in 2006, but Mathias Wein (another big "water drop") stepped forward to continue YafRay development. YafRay 0.0.9 was released. If a good open source project has enough participants, it will work like a waterfall overturning rocks. If it doesn't have enough participants, it will continue on and finally drill through the "stone."

Making soft power stronger than hard power

Taoism suggests that humbleness can help turn soft power into hard power. The biggest body of water is the ocean. Lao-tzu said, "The ocean is immense because of its humbleness. It never refuses any tiny stream."

In February 2007, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, had a flame war with GNOME. In Taoist opinion, the problem with GNOME is that it isn't humble enough to accept a "tiny stream."

The strength of open source comes from its numerous participants. However, two problems currently break this strength. The first is that some projects have open source code but aren't open to new participants. For example, GNOME never asks users to send patches when they have problems. Understandably, the overwhelming number of contributors might destroy the GNOME software. However, GNOME might consider managing the "tiny streams" better rather than refusing them.

The second problem is a lack of support and developer tools. Fortunately, this situation is changing. For example, AMD just announced a major strategic change in open source graphic processors support.

If the open source community can be humbler and lower its "water level" to welcome any tiny stream, it will gain enough strength to overcome the "hard power" of the traditional software industry.

In addition to humbleness, Taoism says that soft power can overcome hard power through the "natural way." Because open source software features open code, more programmers are able to view the code, create new functionality, and fix bugs. This follows the same natural way that science has developed over time. For example, people shared the "open source" of black powder from China in the 1860s, so Americans could improve it and use it to build the railroads connecting east and west coasts.

Taoist spirit for open source participants

Chuang-tzu, the greatest Taoist after Lao-tzu, once refused to hold a post as a minister in the government. He said to his king, "Do you see the sacred turtle in your temple? People put it on the altar and feted it with fruit, flowers, and meals. But finally, it lost its soul and had only a shell left. I would rather live in my natural way and walk in the mud happily than be a sacred and rich shell."

In "The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement", Richard Stallman explained why he didn't go to the temple of closed source software. He said, "The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker.... I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place."

This is the spirit of open source that I like.

According to China's Jewelry and Jade Association (CJJA), the total size of the Chinese jewelry market was 140 billion yuan (US$17.3 billion) in 2005. Colored gemstones, including jade, accounted for 30.6 percent of the market.

The CJJA forecast that the market would increase at an annual rate of 8 percent to 9 percent to about $26 billion between 2006 and 2010, but the increase of gold, diamond, and platinum jewelry might slow down and colored gemstones would take more market shares.

Platinum has had great success in the past decade. China's retail sales of platinum jewelry increased from several million dollars to $2.9 billion per year between 1995 and 2005. According to Sun Fengmin, the secretary-general of the CJJA, China consumed more than 60 tons of platinum for jewelry in 2005. But the market began to shrink in 2006. In the first three quarters of 2006, platinum's sales decreased by 27.2 percent in volume and by 8.1 percent in value due to its lofty price.

Gold's total sales increased 16 percent to 350 tons in 2006, almost the same as that of the "golden age" in mid-1990s. But experts said that the market would slow down, again because of gold's high price. In 2005, China consumed 241 tons of gold for jewelry.

Thanks to a flood of synthetic andOthers simulant ruby and sapphire in mid-1990s, diamond was able to enter the market in China and soon outpaced other gems. In the past decade, sales of diamonds increased from $230 million to $1.8 billion. But as the colored gemstone market resurges, more consumers are choosing colorful gemstones instead of "humdrum" diamond. Chinese jewelers also complain about the monopoly of diamond producers like De Beers, and they now count on the colored gemstone market to add their margins.

According to the CJJA, some gemstone markets, for example ruby and sapphire, will increase by 20 percent to 30 percent per year for the next five years.

China's gemstone and jewelry imports increased 30.8 percent to $3.47 billion in 2005, 3 percent of which were rough gemstones. Jewelry from the European Union accounted for 33.2 percent of imports, South Africa for 27.6 percent, and India for 8.13 percent.

Jewelry exports were $5.49 billion in 2005, only 0.5 percent of which were rough gemstones. In what has become typical for China, exports increased by 22 percent to $2.9 billion in the first half of 2006 compared with same period the previous year, 49.9 percent of which was to Hong Kong, 18 percent to the European Union, and 16 percent to the United States. But about half of Hong Kong's imports also went to the United States, so in fact China exported more than $1.1 billion of jewelry to the United States in the first half of 2006.

Sixty percent of China's export jewelry was processed in Panyu, a county in Guangdong province. Three hundred producers and 70,000 workers made a gross profit of $1.06 billion there in 2005. But some of them have begun to move to Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces to enjoy a better tax rate since their tax-free period in Panyu has ended.

Still Jade Country

Most of the colored gemstones sold in China are jade or stones considered a type of jade by the Chinese, which account for about 92 percent of the market. Ruby, sapphire, crystal, emerald, amber, cat's eye gems, and other gemstones account for about 8 percent of the market.

Of the many types of jade sold in China, jadeite is by far the most popular. China's retail sales of jadeite were $0.9 billion in 2005. Myanmar (formerly Burma) is the biggest producing area of jadeite in the world, and 90 percent of its output was exported to mainland China in the past five years.

Jadeite prices can vary widely according to their quality. One kilogram of the best A-grade rough jadeite may cost millions of dollars, but one ton of C-grade rough jadeite may only be worth hundreds of dollars.

The drying up of the jadeite mines and the Myanmar government's ban on private trade since 2005 has decreased supply. The price of high-quality jadeite increased by three to five times in the past five years. Xiong Deguang, a jewelry expert from China Geologic University, estimated that the price would be grow by triple or even fourfold in the next five years.

Jadeite investors from Yangmei -- a small village in China's Guangdong province -- bought more than half of Myanmar’s high-quality rough jadeites in 2006. For the Yangmei villagers, jadeite is a highly risky business. They call it the "Betting Stone." Usually, three or more families spend a hundred thousand dollars to buy rough jadeite from Myanmar. If the finished product is found to be high quality, they will earn back double or more in profits; otherwise, they might lose all their possessions.

But in the retail market, Chinese sellers cheat consumers by selling B- or C-grade jadeites as A-grade products. In one inspection by the Chinese government in Nanchang province, 90 percent of the jadeite in a retail market was fake. A jadeite offered for $1,000 in the retail market may actually cost only $2 to $3. Experts say that confusion among consumers may one day ruin the whole industry, though it's booming for the time being.

Yunnan, a southeastern province next to Myanmar, imported 4,000 tons of rough jadeite in 2006, accounting for two-thirds of the total imports, but most of it was low quality. High-quality jadeite was sold mostly to Yangmei, and the middle grades to Guangzhou, Sihui, and Pingzhou.

After jadeite, the most salable jades in Chinese market are nephrite jade and the host of related stones that are also sold under the umbrella name “jade” by the Chinese: agate, jasper, turquoise, xiu jade (serpentine), dushan jade (plagioclase feldspar), lapis lazuli, tiger eye, dongling stone (a type of quartz), and others.

The retail sales of these stones were more than $1.2 billion in 2006. One kilogram of high-quality rough nephrite jade is worth from $6,000 to $16,000. Agate’s prices mainly depend on the finished products. Rough agate from Brazil or native producing areas is usually worth only $2 to $4 per kilogram, but a finished 500-gram agate dragon may cost $100 to $10,000 according to the quality of its combination of nature and art.

Chinese consider turquoise to be a kind of jade. Azure-colored turquoise from Iran or the United States is very salable in the market.

The major gemstones other than jade in the Chinese market are ruby, sapphire, crystal, emerald, amber, and cat's eye stones. According to a survey on Shanghai at the end of 2004, 42.4 percent of these gemstones by volume were ruby, 18.8 percent were sapphire, 11.3 percent were crystal, 3.8 percent were emerald, 1.3 percent were amber, 1.3 percent were cat's-eye, and 21.1 percent were other gemstones.

Suffering from the downturn in the past decade, China's retail sales of ruby and sapphire were only $170 million in 2005. But jewelry experts now expect the market to grow. Sun Fengmin said that ruby and sapphire would account for 5 percent to 10 percent of Chinese market once the market become more "mature." He estimated that the retail sales of ruby and sapphire would increase to $0.8 billion in the next five years.

More than 80 percent of the ruby and sapphire in Chinese market is from Thailand, but China has been trying to produce its own gemstones. An undeveloped ruby deposit, extending approximately 10 miles wide and 60 miles long, was found near Yuan River and Nu River in Yunan province. The quality of the ruby there is on average lower than that of Myanmar.

Chinese jewelry collectors also show great interest in colored gemstones. Wang Juan, a Shanghai collector, said that her interest turned from antique ceramics to colored gemstones three years ago. The value of one of her emeralds has increased by 100 percent in the past two years. But she also said that the lack of national standards and creditable authentication institutions for gemstones might hamper the development of the industry.

Entering the Chinese Market

The growth of colored gemstones in China, experts say, will depend on linking them to different aspects of Chinese culture. Traditionally, Chinese believe that jade can bring them good luck, health, and morality. And after the successful promotion of the past decade, now Chinese look at platinum as a symbol of sincere love, and diamond as the perpetuity of marriage. If jewelers want to succeed with ruby, sapphire, emerald, amber and other "immature" colored gemstone markets, they should "introduce" a series of jewelry cultures for them.

Hong Kong Trade Development Council suggests that foreign jewelry makers should mainly focus on China's high-end jewelry market and avoid competion with the native companies on low-end markets, because they have advantage of labor costs and market channels.

Hang Fung Gold Technology Group, a Hong Kong jewelry manufacturer, started by focusing on China's high-end market. The company has been so successful that it plans to establish 200 of its 3D-Gold shops in mainland China before the end of 2010. Lam Sai Wing, the chairman of Hang Fung, said that more than half of the company's sales are already from mainland China, and the market is no doubt their future.

But Chow Tai Fook, one of the Hong Kong's most successful jewelers, seems to have ambitions in both mainland China's high-end and low-end markets. This company divides the market into two classes: the mature markets like Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou; and the new markets, like most of the inland or small cities. Chow Tai Fook takes different tactics in different markets. Up to now, the company has had success in both markets; it has about 300 jewelry shops in mainland China and will increase 50 to 90 more shops per year.

Although taxes have been a barrier to entry for foreign companies, that is slowly changing. Some cities in China's Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces offer the newcomer jewelry producers a lower tax rate. And Hong Kong jewelers can enjoy a better tax rate compared with that of other countries, so there are advantages to establishing a subcompany in Hong Kong first.

China has also lowered its tariff on rough gemstones to 3 percent for the most favored nations in 2006. And the CJJA said that they might successfully persuade the government to reduce the excise rate on all jewelry to between 3 percent and 4 percent in 2007. With the demand for jewelry growing, for many foreign manufacturers the timing has never looked better.

When I began my career as an assistant architect 12 years ago, I used AutoCAD R12, 3D Studio, CorelDraw 6.0, and Photoshop 4.0 for architectural drawing and 3-D modeling. Today, many architects still use their later versions, but those bulky packages provide many functions an architect will never use. Luckily, there are several open source alternatives that are well-suited for architects -- QCad in place of AutoCAD, Blender instead of 3DMax, Inkscape in place of CorelDraw, and the GIMP as a substitute for Photoshop.

CAD is the weakest link in the open source chain for architecture. AutoCAD provides architects with efficient solutions: you can, for instance, put hundreds of doors, windows, or pillars in your plan within seconds. By contrast, in open source CAD, you have to do most of the works from zero. Current open source CAD applications are still not good at handling a mass of standardizing drawings. But if you do unique designs, or would like to develop a custom CAD solution that fits your need, open source is a good choice.

QCad community edition is a simple open source 2-D CAD application that works well for architectural plans. It is very successful in countries and areas such as Taiwan; some Taiwanese companies have taken it as a standard solution for their architectural plans.

The release of the QCad community edition follows a few months behind the professional edition. For example, the latest version of the community edition is 2.0.5.0, while the professional edition is at 2.1.3.2. The latter charges $33 for a single user. You can also download the demo version of the professional edition and use it for 100 hours with no function limits, though it shuts down once every 10 minutes.

QCad has strong tools for point, line, arc, circle, ellipse, polyline, NURBS, text, dimensioning, hatches and solid fills, and measuring. It can also use raster images, and has many other edit tools. The command line is under the main window, and you can accurately control your drawing here. In a word, an experienced architect can find all he needs for architectural plans.

On the down side, QCad doesn't support AutoCAD's DWG files.

Another open source CAD application is BRL-CAD. It handles 3-D CAD for constructive solid geometry (CSG) modeling. Or you can choose Open CASCADE as your platform if you want to develop your own CAD.

3-D modeling and rendering

For 3-D modeling you can choose Blender or the less powerful Wings 3D.

Blender is a small but powerful 3-D modeling, rendering, and animation application. It can import files in DXF, OBJ, and 3-DS formats. You can also put the left view, front view, and planform of your architectural plans in the background of the software to begin your modeling. You can choose elements such as mesh, curve, surface, or meta to do your 3-D modeling in different ways. A new feature in the latest version, Blender 2.44, called Subsurface Scattering (SSS) can help you to work out a perfect virtual reality for "participating media" such as glaze tile and crystal.

You can download some tutorials on Blender.org. If you're used to 3-DMax, you may feel frustrated when you use Blender for the first time, but if you keep trying, you'll find it's simple when you get used to it.

A good companion to Blender for the architect or interior decorator is YafRay (Yet Another Free Raytracer). The latest version, 0.09, contains global illumination (which can make architectural scenes look realistic), skydome illumination, caustics (to deal with light emitted from a point and reflected or refracted from a curved surface), and depth of field and blurry reflections. With YafRay you can render your 3-D model to look a like a real photo in Blender.

Vector and bitmap drawing programs

After finishing your works in Blender or QCad, you may need to polish your graphics using a vector or bitmap drawing programs. Vector programs include Inkscape, Xara LX, and Skencil. Bitmap alternatives include the GIMP, Paint.net, CinePaint, Gimpshop, and Krita.

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor that supports most of the standard drawing features you can find in CorelDraw or Illustrator. You can even create some simple architectural plans using only Inkscape.

The GIMP may be the most well-known open source drawing program. It has powerful painting tools and more than 100 plugins and scripts. You can use it to perfect your 3-D rendering graphics just the way you did in Photoshop.

Angel and devil

You will gain several advantages if you choose open source software for your architectural drawing:

You'll save money. You may spend zero on your software, not the $10,000 you had to pay before.

The programs will go like the wind on your old computer, so you can save both time and money.

The programs are simple and easy to use. They don't have too many showy functions, and their interfaces are so simple that you can get used to them within a few hours.

You can download lots of plugins or scripts from open source communities. You can also add functions you need to the software, either by yourself or by picking someone who can offer the service; that's the benefit of open source.

If you happen to be using a pirated copy of AutoCAD or 3-DMax, you will never worry about that again. This will be very good for your mental health.

But before you move to open source you should prepare yourself:

You should stop thinking about the commercial software you used before. You may think "it's crazy" when you try these open source applications for the first time and want to turn back to your old software. Be patient and keep trying. You will soon learn their merits and get used to them.

You should also ask yourself if these can meet your need when you have heavy standardizing works to do. If the answer is no, you'd better not change.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that open source software such as Blender, QCad, Inkscape, and the GIMP can do just about any architectural drawing that commercial software can do, though sometimes they are less efficient and not compatible to your previous work (as in QCad's lack of support for DWG files).

When not committing journalism, I work on other writing projects, and on some trade business.

In the past, I have been an assistant architect, a cartoonist, an official in Chinese government, and the owner of a small computer company.

This site is mostly a portal for my published works.