How to change the default encoding to UTF-8 for Apache

In httpd.conf add (or change if it's already there):

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

Add this to your .htaccess:

IndexOptions +Charset=UTF-8

Or, if you have administrator rights, you could set it globally by editing httpd.conf and adding:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

(You can use AddDefaultCharset in .htaccess too, but it won’t affect Apache-generated directory listings that way.)

See AddDefaultCharset Directive, AddCharset Directive, and this article.

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

But I have to use Chinese characters now and then. Previously, I translated Chinese characters to Unicode code and include it in the document using the &# hack. But it is only useful for page having a few characters.

There is a better way to do that: encode the charset information in the filename, and apache will output the proper encoding header based on that. This is possible thanks to the AddCharset lines in the conf file, such as the line below:

conf/httpd.conf:

AddCharset UTF-8 .utf8

So if you have a file whose names ends in .html.utf8, apache will serve the page as if it is encoded in UTF-8 and will dump the proper character-encoding directive in the header accordingly.