The trouble with using a Japanese font for setting Chinese is that despite a great many shared characters the two languages are different. The Unicode look-up for 值 doesn't give a Japanese mapping for the character, nor a listing in major Japanese dictionaries, so you'll probably need a Chinese font. The fact that the character has both GB and Big-5 encoding suggests it is available in most Chinese fonts, and perhaps you already know that "Mincho" is "Ming" in Chinese.

David

If you can sort your glyphs by Unicode (such is possible, for instance, with InDesign) or you can type in the Unicode for this character (OS X allows that; rumour has it that Windows also can, I don't know how) you don't have to "find" it -- it's there in the font or it is not.

If it is, you'll see it. If it is not, then you'll see the default "Not available" character for the font (usually just an empty square). If it's not in the font, you have to find another one that comes close, design-wise, and either use that font for all of your text (recommended), or use it for just this single character (not recommeded, unless you are highly skilled in spotting the design differences between the two. Compare this to using an Arial "A" inside a Times Roman Text.).

You can try "Fonts that support..." on Fileformat.info -- I have had mixed experience with these, good and bad.

Cool -- David also knows why it's not in your font. I dint know that.

The corresponding Japanese character is encoded at U+5024 (値). If you absolutely must use the Chinese form, then the closest (design-wise) Chinese font on Mac OS X that includes a glyph for U+503C is 华文宋体.ttf (STSong).

The OP reports he is setting Chinese, and my point is that in such work it is generally wise to start with a Chinese font and look farther afield only when necessary. 值 versus 値 both illustrates and complicates the issue. Lin Yutang's 1972 Chinese-English dictionary uses 值 for the headword, but says (91A.30-1) 値 is the form usually used in print; DeFrancis' 1996 Alphabetically-Based Computerized C-E dictionary uses 值 and ignores 値. The Unicode look-up gives the same reference for both forms in the 1931 Mathews C-E dictionary, #975; however, Mathews -- which frequently shows variants -- in this instance gives only 値.

Out in the world of fonts, Arphic's Big-5 font "AR Mingti Light Big5" uses the glyph 値 at the codepoints where Big-5 and Unicode have 值, supporting the notion the two forms are interchangeable; not surprisingly, the same foundry's Unicode 3 font "AR MingU30" has both forms at their proper Unicode locations. The Kozuko Mincho and Gothic fonts that Adobe bundles with InDesign do not include 值, but they do offer a variant glyph for 値 at the same code-point (i.e., not 值 -- though many other Kozuko variants point to alternates with separate code-points).

So it's probably okay to swap 值 for 値 in Chinese text, though the former may seem more "modern." But how about 內/内 and 說/説? If you know which one you want, InDesign can use Kozuko Mincho's alternate forms feature to swap the underlying codes. The trick, of course, in knowing what the author or editor intends, even if they don't always know themselves.

David

The bottom line is that if you are intending to typeset some text in Simplified Chinese, you should be using a Simplified Chinese font, not a Japanese one. In terms of fonts that are bundled with Mac OS X, the 华文宋体.ttf (STSong) font is the closest to Hiragino Mincho ProN W3, design-wise.