From a Small Note to a Chinese Passport: Documenting My Daughter's Story of Obtaining Documents in Finland

This is a photo we took at the embassy this summer while getting a passport for our daughter. M, who is now thousands of kilometers away, looked at it and said, "Twenty years from now, this will feel historical." I laughed when he said that, but he was probably right.

This summer, we welcomed our second daughter, who was born in Finland. Not long after we came home from the hospital, while the whole family was still trying to settle into the new rhythm, we had to deal with something very unglamorous: documents.

A child born in Finland does not automatically get Finnish nationality. In our case, apart from the birth certificate handed to us at discharge, she had no real paperwork yet. No passport, no residence card, nothing you could use for long-term travel. In other words, she was temporarily living in a very awkward paperwork gap.

Legally, there was no problem. As long as the parents have legal residence, a child born in Finland can stay for a while. I checked, and the official advice is simply to complete the process within three months. No one seemed to be waving a red alarm at us, but without a passport she could not leave Finland, and without a residence card she could later have trouble coming back. So the whole thing turned into a chain of tasks that had to be done in order:

1. Register her name at the Finnish population office.
2. Get the official Finnish birth certificate and residence certificate.
3. Take those documents to the Chinese embassy in Finland to apply for a passport.
4. After the passport is ready, apply for a Finnish residence card for the child.
5. When we eventually return to China, we will also need to handle household registration and an ID card.

It looked a bit like a dependency chain in programming. If one step failed, the rest would just sit there waiting.

The First Paper

On the day we were discharged, the doctor gave us a thin piece of paper with the baby's birth date and gender, and even generated a Finnish ID number for her.

The hospital birth certificate was her very first document, even if it was only a thin piece of paper.

At first glance it looked fairly official, but we later found out that it was not very useful for the later steps. Finland is so digitized that when we later applied for the official certificate through the population office, the staff could simply pull her information from the system. That original paper mostly ended up as a small keepsake.

What I found funny was that she already had a "first document" just a few days after being born. I was holding a newborn in one arm and a piece of paper in the other, and somehow the whole thing felt both serious and absurd.

Another detail I did not know before going through this process: children born in Finland do not need to be named immediately. A few days later, the DVV population office sends a naming notice, and you submit the name online within the given time. Until then, the system basically calls her "daughter of someone."

We filled in the pinyin of the Chinese name we had already chosen. That is when the process got mildly annoying. Because the name was too short and too Chinese, it triggered an extra review. When I called to ask, the staff at the population office even asked, "Is this a common name?" I said yes. They replied, very seriously, "No, common names are more like Mikko, Anna, or Tiina."

Fair enough. Our names do not really belong in that category.

So I explained that it was the pinyin version of a Chinese name, and they asked us to write a short explanation of the name's origin and meaning. We did that carefully, like we were turning in homework.

The whole thing dragged on for weeks. Every time I opened my email, it felt a little like waiting for grades. When the birth registration certificate was finally approved, I genuinely felt relieved.

The official certificate from the population office took several weeks to come through. Seeing it arrive felt like getting past the first real checkpoint.

Once we had that, we could finally move on to the passport.

We filled out the application on the Chinese embassy's website, uploaded the documents, and checked everything twice before clicking submit. In Finland, we did not need to go in person; instead, we had a remote interview. To confirm time and identity, we also had to prepare a recent local newspaper or a box of milk with a visible date on it.

On the day of the video interview, the staff asked us to bring the baby in front of the camera. She happened to yawn and looked completely confused, which made her very first interview pass in a very sleepy, very random way. We could not help laughing.

A few days later, the embassy told us the passport was ready for pickup. She slept through the whole trip, completely unaware of what was happening. We took a few photos at the entrance with the embassy plaque behind us. Simple photos, but they felt strangely important. This was her first trip to the embassy and the first official mark that she existed in the system.

The first page of the passport has that tiny baby photo. Her face looks impossibly serious, like a miniature adult. It is funny, but also reassuring. Once we finally held the passport in our hands, I felt the process relax a little in my head. At least now, she had something that could identify her wherever she goes.

After that came the Finnish residence card. Since both of her parents already had legal residence, this part was much simpler and was approved quickly. A few months later, she would also get a Finnish social security card, although that card is not especially meaningful on its own. Until then, we still had to use her parents' cards when proving her identity at the health clinic.

From a small piece of paper to a passport, residence card, and social security card, we slowly pieced together her little identity puzzle.

Looking back, it felt like we walked her through her first small administrative adventure. When she grows up and sees these photos, she will probably laugh at how serious we were about all of this.