Why mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");

[weiguoming]

Hi all,

I have a database in pure utf-8, the table and each column are in utf8_general_ci.. My html form page is in utf-8 as well: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">.

Then I saved some text into the table, and then display the table, the english is displayed properly, but other languages (chinese in my case) became '???' partially... but I tried using mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); after the mysql connection, everything looks fine. does anyone know what mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); does, and why i need that?

Also, weird enough, if i have my tables in latin1, the display is correct - the only problem is that when i backup the database using myphpdump and restore it, the text becomes partially unreablable..