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Problem: Insert Chinese characters (or other Unicode) into SQL Server (or SQL Server Express).  The characters are inserted as question marks.  What gives?

Solution:

Instead of this: insert into table(field) values (’惨’)

Do this:  insert into table(field) values (N’惨’)

Just use the N prefix on any unicode field and it should work.

Source:http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Development/MS-SQL-Server/Q_21699281.html (just scroll down to the bottom)