Get a unicode from python's str byte sequence

问题:

I have an old django app which was saving UTF-8 strings in the database in a way that made some look like invalid utf8 when I try to fetch them in Ruby.

Strings before saving were of type str in python, but when fetched from the database django was giving me a proper unicode string. When I fetch same record in rails I get a byte sequence that is identical to python's str string and ruby complains that it's an invalid byte sequence.

Example: tested string was a single emoji: