in mysql connection initialization add charset=utf8 and

use_unicode=False

product/ZMySQLDA/db.py

@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ class DB(TM):
 
     def _parse_connection_string(self):
         self._mysql_lock = self._try_transactions = None
-        self._kw_args = kwargs = {'conv': self.conv}
+        self._kw_args = kwargs = {'conv': self.conv, 'charset': 'utf8', 'use_unicode': False}
         items = self._connection.split()
         if not items:
             return