UTF-8 Characters into MySQL using PHP

[likelylad]

I am using the following
PHP 5 and Mysql 4

I have a PHP form that I want to enter UTF-8 characters into a MySQL database.
The top of the php form has

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

I know the MySQL database holds the characters properly as I can paste the characters directly into the Database using a GUI tool.

When I enter the Characters through the PHP form, it looks like the following in the database.

&#21442;&#29031;&#30058;&#21495;

Can anyone advise me how to get these characters to enter correctly.

 

[likelylad]

Just thought I'd let people know how I solved the problem.

First of all I had to add the following line into my code.

mysqli_query($db, "SET CHARACTER SET utf8");
where $db is my connection string.

I then saved the file with the file encoding set to UTF8 using Microsoft Notepad on Win 2000 Pro.