I was experiencing the same problem you posted here

and your solutions

'It is UTF-8 as I can see chinese characters.

After a long struggle, I manage to resolve it by re-definite it as binary.

Anyway, it seems that backing up with phpMyAdmin and restoring it will not be the same as default. Now I am using a online database backup to backup and restore. That works.'


How do you redefinite it as binary?

and how do you do the online db backup to backup and restore?

THanks.