Python: How to print this special string?

Question

I want to print '\\xd6\\xd0\\xb9\\xfa\\xba\\xda\\xc1\\xfa\\xbd\\xad' which is a Chinese character.

l = ['\xd6\xd0\xb9\xfa\xba\xda\xc1\xfa\xbd\xad']
a = [l[0].decode('utf-8')]
print(a[0])

But it raises this error: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xd6 in position 0: invalid continuation byte . I also tried deocde('latin-1') . But the result aren't Chinese characters.

Answer 1

Try with:

l = ['\xd6\xd0\xb9\xfa\xba\xda\xc1\xfa\xbd\xad']
a = [l[0].decode('gb2312').encode('utf-8')]
print(a[0])

output:

中国黑龙江

Update: as Mark's advice, use l[0].decode('gb2312') will be sufficient.

l = ['\xd6\xd0\xb9\xfa\xba\xda\xc1\xfa\xbd\xad']
a = [l[0].decode('gb2312')]
print(a[0])