character encoding, script, typeface/font
There is however no mandated connection between the encoding system
and the font used to display the characters


considering the situation: an utf-8 encoded plain text file (*.txt), how do it display on the computer, is depend on the user, not the author.

in stkaiti:

in hanzipen tc:

in songti tc:

the same content can be displayed by different fonts, to give different impression.

font and encoding are usually tied together for practical reasons


in pre-unicode era, as i remember, on mac os, all big-5 encoded text is defaulted to display initially by the system font "taibei"; while shift jis encoded text would use the font "osaka". in modern days (utf-8), mac / windows are smart enough to choose the font automatically, to display each code point.

for chinese character, the concepts "serif", "sans serif", "script" are, inapplicable.

for this question, i would suggest you read the book "CJKV Information Processing", published by o'really; which is informative &amp; authoritative: 

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596514471.do

they provided the 1st chapter in pdf:

ftp://ftp.oreilly.com/examples/nutshell/cjkv/pdf/CJKVInfoProc.Chap1.pdf