making a list of traditional Chinese characters from a string - python-unicode

Question

I am currently trying to estimate the number of times each character is used in a large sample of traditional Chinese characters. I am interested in characters not words. The file also includes punctuation and western characters.
I am reading in an example file of traditional Chinese characters. The file contains a large sample of traditional Chinese characters. Here is a small subset:
首映鼓掌10分鐘 評語指不及《花樣年華》
該片在柏林首映，完場後獲全場鼓掌10分鐘。王家衛特別為該片剪輯「柏林版本
增減20處 趙本山香港戲分被刪
在柏林影展放映的《一代宗師》版本
教李小龍武功 葉問決戰散打王
另一增加的戲分是開場時葉問（梁朝偉飾）
My strategy is to read each line, split each line into a list, and go through and check each character to see if it already exists in a list or a dictionary of characters. If the character does not yet exist in my list or dictionary I will add it to that list, if it does exist in my list or dictionary, I will increase the counter for that specific character. I will probably use two lists, a list of characters, and a parallel list containing the counts. This will be more processing, but should also be much easier to code.
I have not gotten anywhere near this point yet.
I am able to read in the example file successfully. Then I am able to make a list for each line of my file. I am able to print out those individual lines into my output file and sort of reconstitute the original file, and the traditional Chinese comes out intact.
However, I run into trouble when I try to make a list of each character on a particular line.
I've read through the following article. I understood many of the comments, but unfortunately, was unable to understand enough of it to solve my problem.
How to do a Python split() on languages (like Chinese) that don't use whitespace as word separator?
My code looks like the following
#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import codecs
wordfile = open('Chinese_example.txt', 'r')
output = open('Chinese_output_python.txt', 'w')
LINES = wordfile.readlines()
Through various tests I am sure the following line is not splitting the string LINES[0] into its component Chinese characters.
A_LINE = list(LINES[0])
output.write(A_LINE[0])

Answer 1

I mean you want to use this, from answerer 'flow' at How to do a Python split() on languages (like Chinese) that don't use whitespace as word separator? :
from re import compile as _Re
_unicode_chr_splitter = _Re( '(?s)((?:[\ud800-\udbff][\udc00-\udfff])|.)' ).split
def split_unicode_chrs( text ):
return [ chr for chr in _unicode_chr_splitter( text ) if chr ]

Answer 2

to successfully split a line of traditional Chinese characters.. I just had to know the proper syntax to handle encoded characters.. pretty basic.
my_new_list = list(unicode(LINE[0].decode('utf8')));