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I don't think you're using encode correctly, nor do you need to. What you have is a valid unicode string with one 4 digit and one 8 digit escape sequence. Try this in the REPL on, say, OS X
>>> s = u'that\u2019s \U0001f63b'
>>> print s
that’s 😻
In python3, though -
Python 3.4.3 (default, Ju...