set -x prejudiced; won't smell UTF-8 coffee

[jidanni]

Gentlemen, -x's reporting should just pass the Chinese right back.
$ set -x; export LC_ALL=$LANG; echo 中文
+ export LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8
+ LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8
+ echo $'\344\270\255\346\226\207'
中文

Or OK, to be fair, even the ASCII should come back as octal escapes.