Character encoding issue in mysql

[conanl]

In my database, I have some content like this\[code\]?????? ????????????\[/code\].But, when i am trying to fetch the content using \[code\]PHP\[/code\] and display it in broswer, it is showing only some question marks like \[code\]????????? ???????. ??????\[/code\].I tried to set the content type header like this\[code\]header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');\[/code\]But it doesnt work.How can i solve this ? any help would be greatly appreciated.