Sun Yat-Sen University

[roddy]

This topic is for discussion and reviews of Sun Yat-Sen University. Accommodation, courses, on-campus facilities and activities - anything to do with Sun Yat-Sen University goes in here. If there's a lot of discussion about any one particular topic we might split it into a new thread and leave a link here.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/4255-sun-yat-sen-zhongshan-university-guangzhou/

and an older topic

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/12463-zhongshan-sun-yat-sen-university/

[smcdona2]

Hey guys,

I will be going to SYSU for the Septermber term this year, and after ploughing through forums I am still not sure what is the best option for accomodation, so hoping someone can help me with a little advice. Having been living in China for 3 years (albeit not in a capital city), I feel that the 1,650 RMB p/month for a single room in the uni dorms is quite expensive. Though I have looked around at some (western) websites for accomodation close to the university, and it seems that it isn't really any cheaper. I'm just wondering what people's experiences are who have stayed here either in the dorms or outside. Currently I am living in a university campus as a teacher, and like being a part of the campus life. For those who have been in the dorms at SYSU, do you feel the same way or not? For those staying outside the university, can you tell me how much you paid, and (if possible) compare the living conditions to that inside the campus? I have some Chinese students who have done a quick browse on the internet and found close accommodation for 1000 RMB. Basically I am looking to either live by myself, or to share with 1 or 2 Chinese people (students or 20-somethings), and not looking to share with a foreigner, since I know I would end up doing no Chinese practice in this situation.

Thanks for anyone who can help me.

Shaun

[xuefang]

That rent for single room in the uni dorm is for the international dorm near the south gate. There is also another dorm near the east gate and the small north gate, that dorm is much cheaper, about 450RMB per month. But it doesn't inlcude much, you have to buy everything besides the furniture, like mattress, blanket, pillow and so on. I don't remember, but they might only have a Chinese toilet. The rooms aren't as nice as at the international dorm, but seemed ok.

If you want to rent a studio outside the campus for cheaper than 1650 (including all the fees), then you perhaps have to setlle on something that isn't that nice. Atleast that's my experience when I was looking for an apartment last summer. Those apartments that you see online on Chinese sites often doesn't exist.

Of course there are some dirt cheap apartments near the university, but the most cheapest ones might be the ones foreigners aren't allowed to rent.

A good option both for your wallet and your language skills would be to rent together with Chinese students. I don't know in what kind of apartments they live if they chose to live outside the campus.

[Takeshi]

Hi, cool.

I go to this university right now. On a CSC scholarship to study one year of language. I'm pretty satisfied with everything so far.

(Tries to keep this topic active.)

If anyone has any questions about SYSU feel free to ask me!

[roddy]

Thanks Takeshi, that saves me emailing you later ;-)

If you have the time to write something up, there's a list of possible topics to cover here

[Takeshi]

Emailing me? You remembered I went to this uni? XD

Application Process:

I applied through the CSC, so you can probably get more information at CSC related threads. All I have to say is that it was a big pain to do all the paperwork. I put SYSU as my first choice and was so happy I got in; it was the highest ranked school that any of us got compared to my other classmates who got crappier schools in Beijing.

Course and Funding:

I'm on a language course for 1 year, and on the CSC scholarship so I don't know how much it costs.

Arrival and Registration:

I'm sure the process is easy for normal people. No cross that out, I'm sure it is... "possible" for normal people. I had fairly special circumstances and it was basically a miracle that I got everything to work out successfully. I'm not going to go over my circumstances because it won't matter to you unless you decide to come to China in July and your student visa runs out before you can get a residence permit.

The registration was another big pain and a big lineup. I spent more than half a day waiting in the wrong lineup (for the people who have to pay) on top of it. Checking into the dorms wasn't so much of a problem, but they had made me pay an expensive air-conditioner fee (couple hundred RMB) on top of the deposit because my roommate happened to had wanted to rent an air-conditioner. It's not that big of a deal, but it could throw you off if you came to China with barely enough RMB on you. I'd say you need at least 3000 for the first month if you want to be safe.

Accomodation:

There are 3 dorms that international students can stay in:

二号楼: My dorm; also called the "old" dorm. Scholarship students automatically get sent to floors 3~5 here. It has slightly bigger rooms but is well... older and dirtier. When I first came it was a bit of a shock for me, but I got used to it by now. I am generally satisfied with the dorm. There is infinite hot water at all times, but only in the shower. There is no elevator and up to 5 floors. The higher the floor the better though, because then you'll have less humidity and more sunlight. One of my friends who lives on the first floor says that there is mold growing everywhere, no sunlight covered by trees, water forming on the floors, and roaches, mosquitoes & other bugs coming all the time. I don't have any such problems on the 5th floor.

一号楼: Also called the "new" dorm. Has more floors and an elevator. The rooms are much cleaner, and have balconies for hanging clothes outside. (in 二号楼 clothes are hung in the hallway which is sort of "outside"-ish) But the rooms are very small. If it is a single room, there will be room for a bed, a desk, and nothing else. Double rooms have more space, but are still about the same size as single rooms in 二号楼. I notice that the hallways in this dorm have nothing placed outside the doors. in 二号楼 you are technically not allowed to place stuff outside the door, but everyone does anyways and nobody cares. I also hear rumours that 二号楼 in general has a more neighbourhood-ly atmosphere where most people know each other but not in 一号楼 because it is so big and there are elevators I guess. I don't know the exact cost, but I believe it is more expensive than 二号楼.

东351: The worst dorm of the three. It is the furthest away and has the poorest conditions, but is the cheapest. Chinese people also live in this dorm, but foreigners don't share rooms with Chinese. Since Chinese people also live in it, they apparently have to make the security much tighter and there is a curfew as well as a much stricter policy on guests.

Classes, Classrooms, and Teachers: I took 国际汉语学院's Chinese classes. About 20 students per class, but after about half that number will show up, and an even smaller handful will show up everyday.

I guess the teachers are good enough. With the exception of 精读, most will be 靓女 graduate students. I think the teachers I had in Canada were better and more strict though, but I find the Chinese immersion atmosphere of the classes here is really nice; you really can't fallback on English at all, because your teacher and your classmates probably don't know English.

90% of the teachers will be 外省人 (out of province people), and in fact not just that but Northerners. They will speak with a Northern accent. I suppose this is a good thing for most people, though I would have preferred learning from people who speak the way people in the city speak.

The classes are extremely slow and easy. We used 阶梯汉语 textbooks. Last semester I had pretty much no homework, but this semester I have a little. Either way the workload is close to zero. Of course there are exams, and they make up a huge chunk of the mark, so even if you never do your homework and skip everyday, you probably could pass the course with the exams.

In my class last semester 80% of my class was Korean. The good thing about this is that they would all speak Chinese to you, but the bad thing is that you'll never be good friends with any of them because they speak Korean between each other. (Well actually, I think it's just me who sucks at making friends.) In my class this year there are a few more Westerners etc (4 to be exact) and it feels like English owns part of the market share as the lingua franca amongst them and a few others who speak a little English. (But a very very small part) Oh well. In general I find that Westerners and people who can speak English in general are kind of rare here so you should have lots of opportunities to speak Chinese with your classmates and friends, especially if you are of a higher level.

There are some extracurricular classes such as calligraphy, history, newspaper reading, 太极拳, 琴, and Cantonese. (The Cantonese classes are extremely slow and /nobody/ is serious though; if you want to learn Cantonese you'll have to look elsewhere on your own, but I guess they are good as a supplement.)

Campus and Environment:

There are 4 campuses: North Campus (Medicine only), East Campus (Undergrad), South Campus (Mostly Grad), and Zhuhai Campus, which is in a /different city/ called Zhuhai (Undergrad). The South Campus is where 国际汉语学院 where foreigners learn Chinese is and it is in the most convenient place in the city. It has bus stops, metro stops and whatever. I also believe there are school buses that go back and forth to the airport but I didn't come in from the airport so I wouldn't know for sure. It might have been buses to a nearby hotel or something.

Everyone complains that the South Gate (where the international dorms are) has no food to eat. Well, there is one restaurant that is perhaps very well placed to grab all the new foreigners who can't find places to eat: McDonalds. Every now and then you hear legends of those people who didn't know where to eat and ate at McDonalds for the first few months or so.

Banks, post office, restaurants, canteens, cafes, Internet cafes(not sure, but available closeby), shops and supermarkets (and real like 卖菜 markets) are all available on campus.

There are a fair number of canteens over the school with various rumours of some (学五) being better than others (学一). For some strange reason every international student complains that they all suck and will all go eat outside with their friends or order 外卖 all the time. I personally eat at 学一 pretty much everyday. Rumours say it is the worst tasting one, but it is the closest to the international dorm, feels a little cheaper than the others, and is much less crowded (but still very crowded) so I prefer it the most. I personally think the food is fantastic and that everyone complaining is just being too picky, but my mom is a terrible cook and when I was in uni in Canada I had to cook for myself so I'm used to eating bad-tasting food all my life. It will cost as cheap as ¥3~4 per meal if you don't need meat and as expensive as ¥9 or so if you get the most expensive items and eat a lot. I generally spend an average of ¥6 per meal and ¥1.6 for two buns for breakfast.

I think it is fairly difficult to interact with the Chinese students if you are in the 国际汉语学院 because you won't have any classes with them so you won't know any unless you go out of your way to try to. The easiest way to "interact" with them would probably be to go to the English corner which takes place at the monument every Wednesday night or the Japanese corner in the Japanese cafe place every other Friday night. (There might be other language corners that I don't know about) However, if you go there, all the friends you make there will only ever speak to you in the corner's respective language and never in Chinese if you care at all about that.

If you want other Chinese friends, the next best thing you could do is join a club. I'm a member of the baseball club and it's pretty fun and they are fairly welcoming of foreigners. Another way is to get introductions from friends of a friends (ask undergrad or grad students who have Chinese classmates). Or you could simply hit on your teachers. >_>

I'm not sure if it is easy or difficult for people in the normal classes to get friendly with their Chinese classmates. I hear stories here (from other unis) about how it is generally hard, but I have one friend doing grad who is really close with his whole class (and he pretty much has no foreigner friends either lol). But he's in Anthropology, and he explains that "when you have to live together in a total shithole doing fieldwork together, you will really bond with your classmates".

Just another note but, I think at least more than 50% of undergrads and 90% of grads are 外省人 who won't speak Cantonese. This is probably a good thing if you are coming here to learn Mandarin, but if you want to try and learn Cantonese it will be very difficult to find Cantonese people. It's not that they don't exist in Guangzhou, but it is that they don't exist inside the university, and chances are you won't have any way to "know" people outside the university. (Meh, I'm just grumbling because it's so difficult for me to learn Canto here; sometimes I wish I went to a less famous uni in Guangzhou.)

Cost of Living and Budgeting:

I am an extremely cheap person. I eat at the canteen everyday and my social life consists of playing badminton on courts we didn't pay for until we get kicked out by people who booked the court or stuff like that. I figure I spend about 500 a month on food, and then another couple hundred on "misc expenses". (I don't really budget at all because I don't have money problems.) I have not met a single other international student who is this cheap, but it's normal among Chinese people who will even make you install strange stuff to your cellphone or use the campus 短号 so you can text and call for free.

[roddy]

Emailing me? You remembered I went to this uni?

I have a spread sheet I put together over the summer. Sent out a few dozen emails yesterday - not much of a response though, not sure how interested people are in posting about a university they went to two years ago on a forum they only posted on twice.

Anyway, excellent stuff, many thanks.

[Takeshi]

Haha, you owe me lunch when I'm in Beijing next (or wherever you are).

[roddy]

Nope, the next intake of SYSU students owe you lunch ;-) I've just emailed a few other SYSU students to see if they'll join in.

[xuefang]

Let's get started then! I have a bit different story to tell as I'm doing an undergraduate degree in Chinese language. It's at the same department where Takeshi is (国际汉语学院), but our experiences seem to be different.

Application Process

I was already living in Guangzhou so I handed the papers in myself at the office. If you pay the tuition fee yourself, then getting in is just the matter of showing up and paying the fees. Before and after the application process I was in contact with the office through email which worked quite well. You can contact the office from these two emails (you can write in Chinese or in English): violet_wong@126.com and tanjx@mail.sysu.edu.cn.

They say that your documents have to be notarized, but they accepted my documents with my own translation to English just fine. You can find more information about the application from the office's website: http://iso.sysu.edu.cn/ywb/index.htm

Course and funding

I study Chinese language undergraduate degree with other foreigners. I was able to skip 1,5 years because I had studied Chinese before (at Guangzhou University) and was places on 本二下 last semester. On our third year 本三上 (which I'm on at the moment) we will choose if we want to concentrate on Business Chinese or Teaching Chinese, no matter which one you choose, your major will still be Chinese Language. I choose the Teaching Chinese option.

You start from 本一上 (your first semester at year one) and continue like this: 本一下 》 本二上 》本二下 》本三上》本三下》本四上》本四下》graduation.

I will graduate at the beginning of 2014. (In total it takes 4 years to finish the degree if you haven't studied Chinese before.)

I'm paying the tuition fees myself, but hope to get a scholarship for next school year. The tuition fee is 18200RMB per year.

Arrival and registration

I live outside the campus so I was already settled in before the semester begun.

The registration is from hell. The office will open at 8:30, but if you wish to finish everything then you better get to the line at 7:00 or even earlier. The tricky point is that you don't know behind which door you should line up! Just make sure you have all the documents with you that you can think of. The first time it took me three days to register, but last time I managed to do it during the morning.

But don't worry, even it's really confusing to register, but you get a paper with all the steps to take and there are people to help you.

Accomodation

Takeshi knows more about this because I live outside the campus. The south dorm (I guess that's the 一号楼) seems okey. The rooms for one person are small, but you don't really need a lot of space if you live alone. There is a kitchen on the hallway, but it doesn't include anything, you will need to buy all the kitchen equipment yourself and store them in your room.

The 东351 dorm is really cheap, perhaps 450RMB per month or something like that. The rooms aren't that nice, but it's possible to live there. Just remember to buy your own mattress, blanket, pillow and so on. It takes about 15 minutes by foot to walk to the teaching building. There are some shops just next to the dorm and the small north gate is only 5 minutes away. There are lots of restaurants and small shops there (I also live near the small north gate).

Classes, Classrooms and Teachers

Last semester 本二下 I had the following compulsory courses: 听力，写作，泛读 and 综合. We also had selective courses (you should usually choose two every semester): I chose 粤语 and 书法, but there were also 中华礼仪，心理与生活 and 篆刻.

This semester 本三上 we chose our 方向. At Teaching Chinese (汉语教育) we have these compulsory courses: 口语，汉语语言技能教学，综合，写作，语言学概论，现代汉语 and 对外汉语教育引论. From selective course I chose: 汉字学基础，中国国情，现代汉语虚词学习，中级粤语 and 中国历史, but there were also English and 中国现当代作品选读.

There are only three students at our 本三上 Teaching Chinese group. But 综合 and 口语 classes we take together with advanced non-degree students, that means there are more than 20 students at class which is not a good thing. Teaching Chinese courses 汉语语言技能教学，语言学概论, 现代汉语 and 对外汉语教育引论 we take together with 本三下. Only at 写作 there are only us three people.

Selective courses are together with other degree students. Takeshi talked about Cantonese classes, my 中级粤语 is only with other degree students and we only have about 10 students. The class is quite good. (But the 初级粤语 usually has like 50 students and you don't really learn much there.)

As degree students seem to be a bit more hard working and diligent than the non-degree students. Most of the degree students are from Asia, lot's of them from Korea. We always use Chinese when communication with our classmates.

Our teachers have atleast master's degree and they are all quite good, some even very good. Sometimes graduate students give one or two classes, but there is always our real teacher at the classroom to supervise. From Takeshi's report it seems that we degree students get better teachers.

Some courses have more homework than others, but doing the degree means that you should study hard and always finish your homework. With my courseload at the moment I feel quite busy, but that's because I chose so many selective courses.

We don't have midterm exams like non-degree students, only finals at the end of the semester.

Campus

Takeshi wrote pretty well about this. I just want to add that besides Mc'Donald's there are two very nice reastaurant opposite the south gate, which are great for lunch. Names of the restaurants are 壹加壹 and 家乐缘. Lot of students (especially if they live at the 东351) eat at the restaurants at small north gate. There are food from all over China, including Muslim restaurant. Lots of foreign students rent apartments near the small north gate (小北门).

If there are any other questions you have, please feel free to ask!

[skylee]

You start from 本一上 (your first semester at year one) and continue like this: 本一下 》

本二上 》本二下 》本三上》本三下》本四上》本四 下》graduation.

本means 本科 undergraduate studies, 一二三四refers to the year of study. 上下 refers to the first and second semesters respectively.

The registration is from hell. The office will open at 8:30, but if you wish to finish everything then you better get to the line at 7:00 or even earlier. The tricky point is that you don't know behind which door you should line up!

That sounds like my registration in my university years. It was not that bad, but it does make one wonder why it can't be done electronically nowadays. The not knowing where to line up part reminds me of lining up for check-in for my easyjet flight at Hamburg. These things do happen, and not just in China.

[Christophe13]

I'm currently doing degree in UIBE(beijing), but i'm sick of this city, i want to move to gz.

I'm trying to get into SYS Bachelor degree in Finance, but I don't want to redo the 1st year, I want go get directly in the 2nd year.

Do you guys think its possible?

[yellowpower]

@xuefang - chinese as a foreign language undergraduate degree, is this the degree that you're taking or is there a chinese as a second language degree? Is there a difference?

- do the courses teach or make a distinction between 'higher level' chinese i.e. formal reading, writing, speaking, listening for academic, research, or work purposes versus informal everyday conversations. Are the differences between spoken and written chinese, and formal vs informal chinese words, patterns, etc taught to some degree?

- how much of the reading and writing is practical and useful that it helps you for work purposes (report writing, business letter writing, resume, etc) and outside of the classroom?

- do the textbook materials cover politics, social sciences, economics, etc so that there is some exposure to common technical jargon in different fields

- classroom discussions: are they "free-flow, free style" or are they basically just parroting/memorizing the textbook and grammar structures? Do teachers correct mistakes or suggest better expressions to convey what you want to say?

- how much chinese idioms, idiomatic/classical sayings, or 'slang' is covered?

- any advanced cantonese courses available e.g. business cantonese, etc.

Thanks for your time and sharing your thoughts, much appreciated.

[xuefang]

@yellowpower

1. Those degrees mean the same thing, sometimes it's called Chinese as a foreign language, sometimes Chinese as a second language.

2. I'll describe my courses in a more detail so you can get a better understanding what we are learning. These courses I have at the moment on 本三上 at 教育方向. I'm not that familiar with 商务方向, which might be more interesting to you.

口语: Spoken Chinese course is a bit dissapointment at the moment. My last semester's course was great because then we had to do a presentation almost everyweek. But now we only make one presentation during the whole semester. Teacher tries to teach us some sentence patterns and vocabulary related to our topics, but mostly it's just talking in a small group. (This might be because we are attending the course with non-degree students as I guess the university want's to save money and didn't want to give us four classmates a course of our own.)

汉语语言技能教学: At this course we learn how to teach 综合，听力，口语 and 写作. We study with a book called 对外汉语教学导论, which is originally meant for Chinese students.

综合: This course we also take together with non-degree students (again because my class only has four students). We use a book called 汉语精读教程高级1. This is a general 综合 book and nothing related to our 教育方向. At this level the 综合 courses point is to teach more formal words (书面语) and words with almost the same meaning (近义词). But the vocabulary in the book is still general vocabulary.

写作: Here we learn how to write opinion essays (议论文), but we also learned how to write a resume and a job application. Again, the courses are different for those who chose business Chinese.

语言学概论: This course is introduction to linguistics and there's no book.

现代汉语: On this course we use a book called 现代汉语 published by 商务印书馆出版. During this semester we will cover the topics of pronunciation (语音) and vocabulary (词汇). Next semester we will learn characters and grammar. This is one of the hardest course at the moment. In order to be able to teach Chinese we have to know what kind of language putonghua really is.

对外汉语教育引论: Here we learn more about what is this 对外汉语教学, it's a subject/major and a profession. We learned a bit about the history of teaching Chinese and will learn a bit about other fields related to it. Our most important topic of the course will be second language acquisition.

Those are our compulsory courses at the moment. 口语，综合 and 写作 are for learning the general language. And like you noticed, we don't have a listening course at the moment. Other courses are specifically for us with 教育方向 (teaching Chinese specialisation) and there we will learn related vocabulary along the course.

3. We only have two teaching Chinese related textbooks at the moment and both are very useful if I want to become a teacher, even though I'm not planning to do so, they also help me to know Chinese language in a deeper level and learn more about learning Chinese (a good teacher should be a good learner too). Our writing course isn't really related to our specialisation, but it's useful. That course will also help us when we write our bachelor thesis.

4. Like I wrote above our 综合 class is just general vocabulary, but our two textbooks of course include the vocabulary related to teaching Chinese. Teachers don't teach us vocabulary, but we learn it along the course.

5. Our spoken Chinese course isn't very good at the moment, but I have a selective course called 中国国情 which is mostly about us students making presentations and having discussion in class. This is an excellent way for me to practice spoken Chinese, much better than the spoken Chinese course. The discussion on the selective course is more free style and there are lot of opportunities for you to speak. On our spoken Chinese course our teacher will correct us and let us know if we have used wrong word, but she didn't give me (or the others about theirs) much feedback about my presentation.

6. Last semester we had a 阅读 class where our teacher also thaught us some slang expressions, we don't learn it much during this semester. There are quite many chengyu's on our 综合 textbook.

7. I'm afraid there's no really advanced Cantonese courses. I'm taking 中级粤语 at the moment, but it's still about telling the time, introducing our selves, talking about holiday plans. Maybe there are advanced courses for Chinese students, but I don't know anything about that.

I think that you would be more interested in about the Business Chinese option, but unfortunately I don't know much about it.

[Takeshi]

A post I made in another thread reminded me about this, but this university has an officially university sponsored local network server chock full of media for direct download. (Available at speeds like 10~20MiB/s; that's like a few secs for a movie, I'm serious)

www.bojistudio.org

www.maxcell.com.cn/ (this one also exists, but isn't as good imo)

(there are a few others, but I mainly use those two)

Another very useful webpage for info about the school/campus is: http://www.135995.com/ it lists the above two websites and many more.

[sunroof]

Hello everyone,

I'm just accepted by SYSU last month to study master degree this fall semester. But the university said they might not get the JW202 in time and I have to go to China using a tourist visa and then change to X Visa.

Is it possible if I start studying in the university with a tourist visa?

Does anyone know how long does it take to change the L visa to X visa?

Currently I'm waiting for the acceptance letter from the university (waiting for more than a month not sure why it take so long). Actually, I'm planning to study Chinese language at Beijing around August (one month before the semester begin).

Not sure is it possible if I can change the visa type to study in SYSU Guangzhou while studying in Beijing. If it's not possible, this plan will have to be cancel.

Please advise, if anyone have pass through this kind of process before.

Thanks.

[xuefang]

Last summer I was in China with a tourist visa. Before September I went to Hong Kong with all the documents (including JW202) and got the X visa there. After getting the X visa you have one month time in China to get the temporary residence permit.

When I applied to SYSU they noticed that my old visa was going to expire in the end of July (X visa from another university). They asked what I'm going to do and I told them that I handle it my self by going to Hong Kong (first trip to get tourist visa, second trip to get X visa).

I really don't know if SYSU can or want to get you a X visa when you arrive with a tourist visa.

Finally, Welcome to SYSU! What major you chose?

[sunroof]

I chose IMBA because I know nothing about Chinese language and I want to improve my business knowledge.So I really need to study Chinese before the semester begin but not sure is it possible. I will seek advice from the university today, hope they can help me.

Anyway, I'm planning to study Chinese at "Beijing International Chinese College" or "EastWest Connection". Does anyone know which one is better in term of teaching and service? Actually, I think the cost of these two schools is quite expensive but I cannot find any school that offer 1 month program for the absolute beginner in Aug. Any advice would be really appreciated

@Xuefang

So you mean you converted your visa two times (X to L and then L to X) , it look very easy for you. Is it really need to convert visa in HongKong, can't we do it at PSB in Guangzhou? And do you remember how long did it take for you to convert L to X visa.

Thanks

[xuefang]

@sunroof You can change X to L or L to X in Hong Kong by staying there for one night. Hand in the papers in the morning and you get your visa the next day. I used a travel agency to help me so I didn't have to go to the office my self. (For a L visa you can get it in one day if you haven't had a X visa before).

I don't know if it's possible to change in Guangzhou, it's best to confirm from someone else I've just always had the impression that it's not possible.

[roddy]

I'm planning to study Chinese at "Beijing International Chinese College" or "EastWest Connection".

Please don't ask about private schools in Beijing in a topic about a university in Guangzhou. Do research, search on here, then start a new topic if necessary.