title: string.decode() function in python2
body: <p>So I am converting some code from python2 to python3. I don't understand the python2 encode/decode functionality enough to even determine what I should be doing in python3</p>
  
  <p>In python2, I can do the following things:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; c = '\xe5\xb8\x90\xe6\x88\xb7'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; print c
  帐户
  &gt;&gt;&gt; c.decode('utf8')
  u'\u5e10\u6237'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What did I just do there? Doesn't the 'u' prefix mean unicode? Shouldn't the utf8 be '\xe5\xb8\x90\xe6\x88\xb7' since that is what I input in the first place?</p>