characterEncoding has no effect in connection url

Under Redhat as4 x86_64
 
This is my java program:
 
import java.sql.*;
 
public class JdbcExample3 {
 
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    Connection conn = null;
 
    try {
      Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
      conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://10.11.17.85/test?useUnicode=false&characterEncoding=utf8",
        "test", "");
 
      if(!conn.isClosed())
        System.out.println("Successfully connected to " +
          "MySQL server using TCP/IP...");
 
      Statement s = conn.createStatement ();
      s.executeQuery ("SELECT t FROM test");
      ResultSet rs = s.getResultSet ();
      int count = 0;
      while (rs.next ())
      {
          String tVal = rs.getString ("t");
          System.out.println (
                  " t = " + tVal
                  );
          ++count;
      }
      rs.close ();
      s.close ();
      System.out.println (count + " rows were retrieved");
 

    } catch(Exception e) {
      System.err.println("Exception: " + e.getMessage());
    } finally {
      try {
        if(conn != null)
          conn.close();
      } catch(SQLException e) {}
    }
  }
}
 
That program fetches some Chinese words from MySQL.
 
When I changed characterEncoding=utf8 to characterEncoding=latin1 or any existed character set, the output won't change.
 
It seems that characterEncoding= is no use in jdbc url.
 
The output is dependent on environment variable LANG. When I change LANG, the output will also change.
 
Driver is mysql-connector-java-5.0.7.
 
MySQL Server's version is 5.0 and 5.1.
 
Why characterEncoding in url has no effect?

非常感谢，祝您一切顺利 

古雷 
Network Operation Dept 
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