UTF-8 (utf8_general_ci) should work fine for that. Even for the Chinese characters.

I've created blog software in the past, using UTF-8, that I used to post content in multiple languages,...

Hey.

How about something like:

// Create a list object for the conditions, and the query string.
List conditions = new List();
String query = "SELECT * FROM tbooks";

// Add each condition...

You could also have them bothlisted alpabetically.
SELECT name, num FROM tablename ORDER BY name, num
That might give you:

+------+-----+
| name | num |
+------+-----+
| Abc | 1 |
| Abc ...