  Chern insulators are band insulators which exhibit a gap in the bulk and
gapless excitations in the edge. Detection of Chern insulators is a serious
challenge in cold atoms since the Hall transport measurements are technically
unrealistic for neutral atoms. By establishing a natural correspondence between
the time-reversal invariant topological insulator and quantum anomalous Hall
system, we show for a class of Chern insulators that the topology can be
determined by only measuring Bloch eigenstates at highly symmetric points of
the Brillouin zone (BZ). Furthermore, we introduce two experimental schemes
including the spin-resolved Bloch oscillation to carry out the measurement.
These schemes are highly feasible under realistic experimental conditions. Our
results may provide a powerful tool to detect topological phases in cold atoms.
