CSS: Chinese Font Guide 黑體 宋體

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Chinese typefaces

There are 3 major Chinese typefaces.

Sans-Serif (Hei 黑體)

Uniform thickness. Usually used on computer for body text.

chinese font PingFang SC 2026-03 15.35
chinese font PingFang SC 2026-03 15.35

Serif (Song 宋體 / Ming 明體)

Font name often contain Song/Ming 宋體/仿宋/明體.

chinese font Songti SC 2026-03 16.51
chinese font Songti SC 2026-03 16.51

Brush Stroke (Kai 楷軆)

Each stroke's thickness varies.

chinese font kaiti 2026-04-20 34226
chinese font kaiti 2026-04-20 34226

Language Attribute

Specify a Language Attribute. This helps browser choose the right font. Otherwise it'll often assume Japanese and result in inconsistent rendering.

<span lang="zh">中文</span>
lang="zh"

lang code for Chinese.

lang="zh-cn"

For China. Uses simplified char.

lang="zh-tw"

For Taiwan. Uses traditional char.

Chinese Font on Microsoft Windows

Chinese Font on Mac

Chinese Font on Linux

The WenQuanYi (文泉驛) family is most common. This family does not include brush-stroke style (Kei) typeface though. This is the only Chinese font installed with Ubuntu by default, as of 2012-04.

Chinese Font

CSS Font