With the following code
lst = [u\'\\u5de5\', u\'\\u5de5\'] msg = repr(lst).decode(\'unicode-escape\') print msg
I got
[u\'工
>>> import sys >>> lst = [u'\u5de5', u'\u5de5'] >>> msg = repr([x.encode(sys.stdout.encoding) for x in lst]).decode('string-escape') >>> print msg ['工', '工']