title: Unicode and `decode()` in Python
body: <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; a = "我"  # chinese  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; b = unicode(a,"gb2312")  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; a.__class__   
  &lt;type 'str'&gt;   
  &gt;&gt;&gt; b.__class__   
  &lt;type 'unicode'&gt;  # b is unicode
  &gt;&gt;&gt; a
  '\xce\xd2'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; b
  u'\u6211' 
  
  &gt;&gt;&gt; c = u"我"
  &gt;&gt;&gt; c.__class__
  &lt;type 'unicode'&gt;  # c is unicode
  &gt;&gt;&gt; c
  u'\xce\xd2'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><code>b</code> and <code>c</code> are all unicode, but <code>&gt;&gt;&gt; b</code> outputs <code>u'\u6211'</code>, and <code>&gt;&gt;&gt; c</code> outputs <code>u'\xce\xd2'</code>, why?</p>