title: Chinese character encoding with swift
body: <pre><code>let chineseWord = "好" 
  let encodedWord = chineseWord.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)! // outputs &lt;e5a5bd&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want the output to be <code>%e5%a5%bd</code> but XCode says that <code>encodedWord</code> is of type <code>NSData</code> and therefore I'm not able to loop through it and add <code>%</code> signs as it isn't a string. Is there a way to convert <code>NSData</code> to strings? And also if it isn't too much trouble could someone give a brief explanation of what <code>NSData</code> actually is? I read the documentation and I can't really grasp the concept.</p>