Here are some steps to read a Chinese text email from SBC Webmail.
如何在互联网上阅读中文

It is greatly encouraged to read your email using Firefox. Follow the steps shown below. 

Try this： 请尝试下列步骤：

View > Character Encoding > Auto-Detect > Chinese

If not, try these steps: 如果不能，请尝试下列步骤：

View > Character Encoding > More Encodings > East Asian >
Choose one or all of these:
    Chinese Simplified - GB2312, GBK, GB18030, HZ, ISO-2022-CN
    Chinese Traditional - Big5, Big5-HKSCS, EUC-TW

If you are using Internet Explorer, here are the steps:

Try this： 请尝试下列步骤：

View > Encoding > Auto-Select (for the best solution) if not then
                               Chinese Simplified (HZ)
                               Unicode (UTF-8)

If not, try these steps: 如果不能，请尝试下列步骤：
View > Encoding > More >
                               Chinese Simplified (GB18030)
                               Chinese Simplified (GB2312)
                               Chinese Traditional (Big5)