How do I display Chinese/Japanese characters in a Linux VT console?

Solution 1:

I don't think it's possible. There is only room for a few hundred chars in the standard vga/console. Perhaps one of the Japanese alphabets would technically be possible, but not Chinese. A few more details are here: https://askubuntu.com/a/98750/116108

What I would suggest is to try fbterm:

sudo apt-get install fbterm

It can display a much wider range of UTF-8, so there is a decent chance it will support Chinese if the default font does. Perhaps that can be changed too.

Another choice of last resort might be Pinyin, though I have no idea if significant number of Chinese understand it.