Mysql's offical document http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/charset-table.html provides the syntax:
ALTER TABLEtbl_name
[[DEFAULT] CHARACTER SETcharset_name
] [COLLATEcollation_name
]
Unfortunately it doesn't work in that way.
here is the right syntax:
ALTER TABLE tbl_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET charset_name COLLET collation_name