Non-ASCII characters in txt file can't be import correctly by Mathematica10

Question

I'm using Mathematica v10.0.2 on Win7.

I have a text file in which there are some Chinese characters and I would Import the file into Mathematica as a string by:

str=Import["...file.txt"]

However, the Chinese characters were all "translated" to strange characters like "Ò»Êø¹â".

Note that a string containing Chinese characters can be correctly Export ed to a txt file.

nothing changes when I try $CharacterEncoding = "UTF-8" or $SystemCharacterEncoding = "UTF-8"

what should I do?

Or is there any I can turn the "Ò»Êø¹â" back to the characters in original txt file?

Answer 1

refering to Can I read Chinese characters with ReadList correctly? here is the solution:

first try

FromCharacterCode[
ToCharacterCode[
ReadList["...file.txt", Record, 1]], #] & /@ $CharacterEncodings

read the output then select the one of $CharacterEncodings which correctly translated the characters (which may depend on your systems or Mathematica versions), inset it into the # in the code above.

for my Mma10.0.2 on Win7, It's "CP936" that works

FromCharacterCode[
ToCharacterCode[
ReadList["...file.txt", Record, 1]], "CP936"] & /@ $CharacterEncodings