About Chinese.fi
China through Nordic eyes โ honest, personal, practical.
What this site is
Chinese.fi is a magazine about China for people in Finland and the Nordics. It covers food, travel, cities, culture, and language โ the things you actually want to know when China comes up in conversation, at work, or before a trip.
Most content about China online is written by tourists passing through, journalists covering politics, or AI-generated filler with no real experience behind it. This site is different. Every article is written from 23 years of living in China โ not research, not secondhand accounts, not guesswork.
It is not a tourist brochure, a political blog, or a language textbook. It is an honest introduction to a country that is often talked about but rarely explained well.
Who writes this
I am a software engineer from China. I grew up there, lived there for 23 years, and then moved to Finland to study at Aalto University. Finland became home. I now live here with my two daughters โ the older one is learning figure skating, which is how I ended up writing an article about the Butterfly Lovers violin concerto.
I write from personal experience. When I describe a dish, I have cooked it hundreds of times. When I write about a city, I have lived there or spent real time there โ not just visited for a weekend. When I explain a cultural habit, I am explaining something I grew up doing.
This perspective โ Chinese on the inside, Nordic on the outside โ is what makes this site possible. I understand what surprises Finnish people about China because those same things stopped surprising me only after years of living between both worlds.
Why the Nordics
I live in Finland. My friends, colleagues, and neighbours are Finnish and Nordic. The questions they ask me about China โ over coffee, at the school gate, at dinner โ are what shaped the content on this site. They are good questions, and the answers deserve more than a quick conversation.
The Nordic perspective also matters for practical content. Visa rules for Finnish citizens, direct flight options from Helsinki, how to navigate China without speaking the language โ these guides are written specifically for people starting their journey from here.