So sorting by name/title doesn't seem to work in the Chinese locale.

In contrast, the Contacts app sorts names correctly, i.e. by the pinyin of the characters. If LC_COLLATE is respected this should just work... I can't figure out what order Notepad is putting those in right now...

Edit: actually, the sort order Notepad is currently using is the same as when LC_COLLATE is C. For example,

$ printf '%s\n' 中 国|LC_COLLATE=zh_CN sort 
国
中
$ printf '%s\n' 中 国|LC_COLLATE=C sort          
中
国

The former is in pinyin order, while the latter is the same order Notepad is producing.

Edit: To clarify, the above wasn't produced in the shell on the phone, but a separate PC. I have now tried it in the shell launched via adb shell, and to my surprise, not only is there no locale command, but setting LC_COLLATE doesn't do anything; it produces the order as if LC_COLLATE is C or just unset. Don't know if this is relevant... I guess this adb shell is probably restricted in some way.