Splitting string containing non ascii characters

[lungwahchong]

Hi,

I have these strings which are pulled from a database which contains both
english and chinese characters(big5).

e.g.

Fragrant Rice 10kg Green Dragon????
Broken Rice 10kg G.Elephant ?????

I want to split the string at the first occurance of the non ascii character
so that i can get the english and chinese parts separated. Can anyone help
with a sample function on how to do this.

Thanks