Something

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# save and run as  ./mysql_unicode_test.pl dbi:mysql:database=yourdb youruser yourpw

use strict;

use DBI;

our $dbh= DBI->connect(@ARGV,
		       {
			RaiseError => 1,
			mysql_enable_utf8 => 1
		       })
  or die;

$dbh->do("drop table if exists fifi");
$dbh->do("create table if not exists fifi(a varchar(200) character set utf8)");

our $insertsth= $dbh->prepare("insert into fifi values(?)");

our $teststr= join("", map { chr $_ }
		   qw(
			 10 100 1000 10000
			 8888
			 9999
			 65530
			 65533
			 65536
			 70000
			 80000
			 90000
			 100000
			 9999
			 8888
		    ));

$insertsth->execute($teststr);

our $selsth= $dbh->prepare("select * from fifi");
$selsth->execute();
our ($teststr2)= $selsth->fetchrow_array;

print join( " ", map { ord $_ } split //, $teststr2), "\n";