Wang Yang, 27, met Chen Lihong at a Chinese New Year party in Helsinki years ago and got married afterwards. Two years after marriage, they had their first baby, which added to the festival joy earlier this year.

Residing in a cozy apartment in the northern suburb, the couple seemed in quite high spirits in their family life. Wang had hung on the guest room wall some Chinese knots and other ornaments to create New Year atmosphere.

The period from January 30 to February 14 marked the Chinese Spring Festival in 2014, also regarded as the start of the so-called Year of Horse. Although far away from their hometown, the young couple made dumplings and yuan xiao, both traditional Chinese cuisine, for celebration.

Wang has spent eight years in Finland, and only returned to China on Spring Festival once to reunite with relatives. "Although we enjoy the Spring Festival, it is not a legal holiday in Finland," he said. He considered himself as a typical hardworking white-collar worker at his company, a medium sized IT firm.

Wang came to Finland eight years ago as a student majoring in IT, and found a job after graduation, whereas Chen has served as a nurse in a private nursing home for elderly.

Presently there are over 5,000 Chinese people living in the capital area, inhabited by a population of 1.2 million. Most of the Chinese are students, and the rest are mainly employees who stay here after graduation.

Around ten years ago when Nokia was a world mobile phone leader, Chinese youngsters were fascinated and thronged to universities in Finland. Since then Chinese have continued to come in and devoted themselves to the telecommunication industry. As time went by, many students turned to IT programming, and Wang was one of them.

"You can see many foreign faces in Finnish companies, whether big ones or small and medium-sizedones, and they have become an indispensable part," said Wang.

Zhao Hanbo, 30, also an IT graduate, works for a consulting firm. Together with his wife, another Chinese white collar, he has been living in Finland for more than six years. The couple had just bought an apartment in Espoo, a western satellite city packed with headquarters of high profile companies and high-tech enterprises.

With a background of computer science in Helsinki University of Technology, one of the three colleges later united to form Aalto University, Zhao went to work in Belgium and Sweden before he settled down in Finland. He is now a technical expert in the consulting company.

Zhao believed that expertise and talents from China, as well as it's market, play a vital role in Finnish entrepreneurs' effort to develope international businesses. Provided the economic tie between China and Finland is stable, he sees more young Chinese likely to choose to work in Finland.

"First of all, Chinese market is huge. It is very important for many Finnish small and medium-sized companies. Besides, Chinese employees, as a representative of the oriental culture, are positive elements in promoting diversification of internal cultures of Finnish companies," said Zhao.

Source: Xinhua News Agency