PART1： change mysql default character set to UTF8 in my.cnf
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3513773/change-mysql-default-character-set-to-utf8-in-my-cnf
[mysqld]
init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_unicode_ci'
init_connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_unicode_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake
[client]
default-character-set=utf8
[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8
PART2：改变已有数据库的字符集
mysql> alter database zuche_production character set utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci ;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
PART3：有用的语句
mysql> show table status from zuche_production;
mysql> show variables like "%character%";show variables like "%collation%";
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | utf8 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | utf8 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_database | utf8_unicode_ci |
| collation_server | utf8_unicode_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)