Kendra Schaefer’s Field Guide to Implementing Chinese Fonts in CSS
Beijing-based designer Kendra Schaefer has created an incredibly valuable resource in writing up: Chinese Standard Web Fonts: A Guide to CSS Font Family Declarations for Web Design in Simplified Chinese. While you’d best head to Kendra’s site for the full details, we’ve included some highlights below:
Good Rules for Using Chinese fonts in CSS
Use the Chinese characters, and also spell out the font name
Example:
font-family: Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, "Microsoft Yahei","微软雅黑", STXihei, "华文细黑", sans-serif;Declare English target fonts before Chinese target fonts
Code example:
font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", "Microsoft YaHei", "微软雅黑", STXihei, "华文细黑", serif;…
微软雅黑 – Microsoft YaHei
Microsoft YaHei is in my opinion, the Helvetica of the Chinese font world – it looks nice in most sizes (the Mac font equivalent is probably STXihei, the “light” version of STHeiTi). I find it’s modern, fresh and clean, and like a Rubenesque lady, is thick in all the right bits.
…
Declare that shit (updated to add Simsun fallback):
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, "Microsoft YaHei New", "Microsoft Yahei", "微软雅黑", 宋体, SimSun, STXihei, "华文细黑", sans-serif;