[Tex/LaTex] pandoc does not recognize Chinese characters

Question

I want to compile, with pandoc, a Markdown document containing CJK elements (Chinese, actually).
It was stated there that --latex-engine=xelatex option allows pandoc to compile Unicode characters.

However, I tried
cjk.md:

Hello
你好

compiled with (in bash)

pandoc -s -o cjk.pdf --latex-engine=xelatex cjk.md

But the resulting .pdf has Hello shown only, while 你好 is not shown.
Have I missed something?

(Yesterday I asked this in Stack overflow, but no one paid attention to me…. and people there are scary to me ><" )

background: I plan to ask quite many question in Math SE, and want to minimize the trouble converting them to another file convenient to compile on local.
Mandarin is my native, I sometimes desire to add comments in Chinese (for my own reference only).
If I cannot find a easy way to compile, on local, markdown documents embedded with LaTeX and strewn with few Chinese words, my motivation to do all these would be discouraged.

Answer 1

The conversion to PDF uses LaTex as the backend. You will need to specify a suitable mainfont with chinese glyphs. You can do this by putting the following section at the top of your .md document, e.g.

---
mainfont: Noto Sans Mono CJK TC
---

Then compile with the --latex-engine=xelatex switch and you should have your desired output. Note: run fc-list from a terminal to see which CJK fonts are installed.