I too face the same problem. I think that the problem here is that the post install steps are not clear, there is more to do to setup this module ( Encode ).

The code in the latest version of Encode.pm will ignore this file if it's not there.

I tried to also run, as some people have suggested, enc2xs but get the following error.

$  ../../../perl5.8/script/enc2xs -C    
 require Encode;
...
 require Encode::CN::HZ;
Warning: something's wrong at ../../../perl5.8/script/enc2xs line 1017
+.
/scratch/rkazak/perl5.8/lib/5.8.9/Encode
Generating /scratch/rkazak/perl5.8/lib/5.8.9/IA64.ARCHREV_0-thread-mul
+ti-LP64/Encode/ConfigLocal.pm...
$
[download]

This generates a minimal file, which could be used I guess. I would like to know what the e2x files are for, they look like templates for setting up encodings? Maybe this is mostly a documentation issue?