htmlspecialchars (decode UTF-8>write to mysql>encode to UTF-8)?

[lyingbuddha]

Hi,

I'm receiveing a form data from a UTF-8 encoded page,

I'm using

$text= htmlspecialchars($text);

and writing data to table but I couldn't manage to decode data back to UTF-8 for html output.

I've looked around htmlspecialchars on php.net but I guess I'm stupid.