流明数据库连接字符编码

I have a problem with Lumen connection character encoding

I tried everything and I figured that the connection is the problem

In a lumen model, I created a new mysqli connection like this

$sql = "SELECT summary FROM exp_fb_assessments WHERE aid=8192";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    echo $row["summary"] . "<br>";
}

And right after that, I do this to see the output of the default DB Lumen connection

$results = DB::select("SELECT summary FROM exp_fb_assessments WHERE aid=8192");
echo $results[0]->summary;

As you can see both are exactly the same but I get different results

Test 例如：发表 这篇论文 什么时候 是 的 
这篇论文是什么时候发表的？ 
Test 例如：å‘表 这篇论文 什么时候 是 çš„ 
这篇论文是什么时候å‘表的？

How can I fix this or at least debug and find where the problem with the connection is.

NOTE: I tried setting these in my .env file:

DB_CHARSET=utf8
DB_CHARACTERSET=ut8
DB_COLLATION=utf8_unicode_ci

still not working.