title: CSS - Why do Chinese websites use English font-family
body: <p>I have worked on a couple of multi lingual website with both an English and Chinese version. I would always specify a Chinese CSS font-family for the Chinese version, and an English one for the English version. Makes sense right?</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <p>Chinese:</p>
  
  <pre><code>html body.chinese {
     font-family: '宋体',宋体b8b体,Microsoft YaHei, Arial, sans-serif
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>English:</p>
  
  <pre><code>html body {
     font-family: Arial,Helvetica,"Nimbus Sans L",sans-serif;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then I noticed that my font didn't always display correctly in Chinese depending on the OS/browser, so I went to take a look at how some famous Chinese websites do it...</p>
  
  <p>What I found out is that they don't specify Chinese font-families, but just English ones like Arial.</p>
  
  <p>Take a look at baidu.com:</p>
  
  <pre><code>body {
     font: 12px arial;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Weibo.com:</p>
  
  <pre><code>body, button, input, select, textarea {
     font: 12px/1.125 Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
     _font-family: "SimSun";
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>1) Does anyone know why baidu does not specify a common Chinese font like SongTi? </p>
  
  <p>2) And why does weibo to the same, but they add '_font-famly: "SimSun"' underneath their font declaration with a prepended underscore?</p>
  
  <p>FYI: I used both English and Chinese computers/browsers to check and I'm located in China. It always displays like this.</p>