passing utf8 characters with html over URL?

[Eriksr21]

I'm trying to use ajax to send user input which contains HTML and utf8 characters(ex: chinese , japanese arabic characters) to a php script for it to store in database.I normally escape() the html content first before placing it into url. however the escape is cauing the uft8 characters to become hex codes.For example (ORIGINAL):\[code\]<div id="box">