Alright, my son now has a Canadian and Taiwanese passport. Had some hassles with the Taiwanese one because my wife forgot to mention that he already has an English name. So they just put the pingying for his name. They are correcting it now…otherwise his plane ticket wouldn’t work with both of his passports.
And now my question is…if we’re going to Canada then which passport does he show when?
Exiting Taiwan:
Entering Canda:
Exiting Canada:
Entering Taiwan:
TCCT.
We didn’t put his English name on his Taiwanese passport and we didn’t put his Chinese name on his British one. The airline doesn’t care which passport you use to validate the name on his air ticket, as long as one of them matches.
As for immigration, exit Taiwan on the Taiwanese one, enter Canada on the Canadian one, exit Canada on the Canadian one and re-enter Taiwan on the Taiwanese one.
Wow, that was fast!! Congrats!
Taiwan passport to exit Taiwan.
Canadian passport to enter Canada.
(Canadian passport to leave Canada, assuming this step is even necessary.)
Taiwan passport to enter Taiwan.
Yeah, it was fast. It would be great Mordeth if you could update the thread asking about how quickly Taiwan passports are issued. You’ve asked a lot of questions lately and received a lot of help. Others may be in your situation some day, so updating the thread(s) with some info would be a nice gesture. I’m glad that things have worked out so well for you.
By the way, I’m in agreement with everybody above about which passports should be used. There’s probably several threads on this already, by the way.
I find this very interesting. The airline (Delta) was fairly adamant that we had to use the same passport for all countries/airports otherwise the names wouldn’t match. So we had to pay twice for the Taiwan passport to redo the name.
We were flying to Europe, not America. Maybe that’s the difference? Although I’m pretty sure maoman is in the same position with his kids’ passports as me, and he WAS going to Canada.
For us, we go to the check-in desk and simply show the passport that has the same name as the one on the ticket. This is a totally different thing from when you go through passport control. At passport control in Taiwan, you need to show his local passport, and ONLY that passport. They have no need to know that he has another one, and they don’t care. Same with entering Canada, as far as I know. They see his Canadian passport and that’s that. Vice-versa is the same.
Also there is a new law in Taiwan. You locals can’t pick their own English name for IDs (credit cards, passports…etc) anymore. In the past they could. Now it HAS to be the pinying of their Chinese name.
And in my son’s case he’ll have 3 full names in his Taiwan passport: Chinese, PingYing, English. And we had to show them his Canadian ID so they’d allow the third name.
That’s surprising and rather worrisome. People with the Ministry of the Interior and other ministries told me that people would be free to choose their own spellings, etc. Can you provide any more information on what exactly is going on or who told you this? If there really has been an official change (instead of some official just being confused), I’d like to find out more about this.
so no more Mr Lee, but Mr Li?
I just know what my wife told me after getting back from our local government city hall. They said people are no longer allowed to choose the spelling as it was being abused by people getting multiple IDs all with different English spellings. But I don’t know any more than that.
as for me. i applied for my name in chinese that is translated by my english counterpart. there’s no pinyin written on it. because we apply together with my mpm that the chinese name we are using has my english name written on the taiwan passport as well. there are no problem with me from entering and exiting with two different passport.
Five years ago, we were going through customs when the officer handed back our daughter’s passport and said it had expired. 
Big oversight on our part. I know how it happened, though. We had spent so much time and energy getting her South African passport renewed that we hadn’t bothered to check whether her Taiwanese one had expired, or not. Leave had been taken, tickets had been booked and we were expected home for Xmas. Our luggage was already on the plane. We thought they had to let us go, but despite our pleading, they wouldn’t let her use her South African passport and were adamant that she had to leave with the passport she entered on. We had visions of the whole holiday being ruined and us having to pay for tickets we hadn’t used. We waited for our luggage to be offloaded and went home very despondently. That all happened on a Thursday afternoon.
Friday morning first thing, we were at the relevant government department as soon as the doors opened. We took a few pics at one of those quick photo booths, paid about NT$ 500 (can’t remember if it was referred to as fine or payment for quick processing) and an hour later we walked out with a brand new, up-to-date Taiwanese passport. How was that for quick? I don’t know of anywhere else in the world where you can do that. I stand to be corrected, of course.
That afternoon we left on the same flight without having to pay any penalties. We were just 24 hours late. I would say that was not too shabby an outcome and a thumbs up for the efficiency of that particular Taiwanese government department.
That would make sense actually! Anyways even if the name isn’t the exact same on each passport and you can show both to the airline I don’t think they would make much fuss (unless its EVA Air, China Airlines and other stingy regional airlines). You’d probably OK with the real international airlines.
If you have a passport of a specific country and you are in that country use it if you are on their grounds. Its very simple.
Personally I hate the whole dual nationality nonsense but until people can freely move across countries whenever they like
(like they can within the Schengen Area/European Union) I can understand people need it.
Hopefully in a decade or two we don’t talk about “90 days” or “180 days” anymore but you can stay wherever you like as much as you like.
Luckily countries are more and more interconnected.
My wife’s name is the same on her Belgian and Taiwanese passport … no probs there …
Taiwanese passport to leave and enter Taiwan, HK only (immigration) … although she uses her Belgian one to leave HK (check-in counter) on route to Europe … but lately I guess it’s not needed anymore as Taiwanese can enter Europe visa-less … in the past she used her Belgian one at the check-in Taiwan too … and her Taiwanese at the check-in in Amsterdam …
No, don’t use the Taiwanese passport in Europe if she has a Belgium one. You ask for trouble 
We always give both at check-in in Amsterdam … it’s up to them which they want, no problems …
And now you can get around Europe with only your ID card … which she has
In HK, Taiwanese have some special document for immigration when they work in China … I thought.
I meant at immigration.
Yes the Taibaozheng
There’s actually one line with Pinyin and one called “also known as”. The latter seems to be pretty free for all. In my son’s passport (that we just got) he has my wife’s last name in the Pinyin field (since that’s his official name in the ROC) and my last name in the AKA field since that’s what’s in his Swedish passport. Also, in the Pinyin field we were allowed to use Takeshi instead of Wu (same character in Japanese and Chinese) so unless there’s some rule that says Japanese Pinyin is ok I think you can choose whatever you like.