CSS Why do Chinese websites use the English font family?

Question

I have worked on several several language websites with English and Chinese versions. I would always indicate the Chinese font Chinese version for the Chinese version and English for the English version. Does it make sense right?

Example:

Chinese:

html body.chinese { font-family: '宋体',宋体b8b体,Microsoft YaHei, Arial, sans-serif } 

English:

 html body { font-family: Arial,Helvetica,"Nimbus Sans L",sans-serif; } 

Then I noticed that my font is not always displayed correctly in Chinese depending on the OS / browser, so I went to see how some famous Chinese sites do it ...

What I found out is that they do not indicate Chinese font families, but simply English ones such as Arial.

Take a look at baidu.com:

 body { font: 12px arial; } 

Weibo.com:

 body, button, input, select, textarea { font: 12px/1.125 Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; _font-family: "SimSun"; } 

1) Does anyone know why baidu does not indicate a common Chinese font such as SongTi?

2) And why do weibo also, but they add "_font-famly:" SimSun "under their font declaration with added underline?

FYI: I used English and Chinese computers / browsers to check, and I am in China. It is always displayed as follows.

Answer 1

I found a good guide on defining Chinese font families for CSS here: http://www.kendraschaefer.com/2012/06/chinese-standard-web-fonts-the-ultimate-guide-to-css-font-family-declarations -for-web-design-in-simplified-chinese /

Basically, most websites simply declare the English font and allow the browser to fall back from the default Chinese font for serifs (usually "宋体" aka SimSun) or sans-serif (usually SimHei).