diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index eb6db8b75..b53131194 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
 
     packages=[
         f"texar.{name}"
-        for name in setuptools.find_packages(where='texar/')
+        for name in setuptools.find_packages(where='texar')
     ],
     platforms='any',
 
diff --git a/texar/torch/data/data/text_data_base.py b/texar/torch/data/data/text_data_base.py
index a24f7bd0d..e579186df 100644
--- a/texar/torch/data/data/text_data_base.py
+++ b/texar/torch/data/data/text_data_base.py
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ class TextLineDataSource(DataSource[List[str]]):
 
     def __init__(self, file_paths: MaybeList[str],
                  compression_type: Optional[str] = None,
-                 encoding: Optional[str] = None,
+                 encoding: Optional[str] = "utf-8",
                  delimiter: Optional[str] = None,
                  max_length: Optional[int] = None):
         if compression_type is not None:
diff --git a/texar/torch/data/data_utils.py b/texar/torch/data/data_utils.py
index c9ed140f8..dfc2e35eb 100644
--- a/texar/torch/data/data_utils.py
+++ b/texar/torch/data/data_utils.py
@@ -195,7 +195,7 @@ def read_words(filename: str, newline_token: Optional[str] = None) -> List[str]:
     Returns:
         A list of words.
     """
-    with open(filename, "r") as f:
+    with open(filename, "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
         if Py3:
             if newline_token is None:
                 return f.read().split()
diff --git a/texar/torch/data/vocabulary.py b/texar/torch/data/vocabulary.py
index 3ca20fa83..b8a17aaf5 100644
--- a/texar/torch/data/vocabulary.py
+++ b/texar/torch/data/vocabulary.py
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ def load(self, filename: str) \
             where and :attr:`token_to_id_map_py` are python `defaultdict`
             instances.
         """
-        with open(filename, "r") as vocab_file:
+        with open(filename, "r", encoding="utf-8") as vocab_file:
             vocab = list(line.strip() for line in vocab_file)
 
         warnings.simplefilter("ignore", UnicodeWarning)