diff --git a/lib/py/src/protocol/TJSONProtocol.py b/lib/py/src/protocol/TJSONProtocol.py
index d210bff..aada3fc 100644
--- a/lib/py/src/protocol/TJSONProtocol.py
+++ b/lib/py/src/protocol/TJSONProtocol.py
@@ -251,18 +251,14 @@
 
   def _toChar(self, high, low=None):
     if not low:
-      if sys.version_info[0] == 2:
-        return ("\\u%04x" % high).decode('unicode-escape').encode('utf-8')
-      else:
-        return chr(high)
+      codepoint = high
     else:
       codepoint = (1 << 16) + ((high & 0x3ff) << 10)
       codepoint += low & 0x3ff
-      if sys.version_info[0] == 2:
-        s = "\\U%08x" % codepoint
-        return s.decode('unicode-escape').encode('utf-8')
-      else:
-        return chr(codepoint)
+    if sys.version_info[0] == 2:
+      return unichr(codepoint).encode('utf-8')
+    else:
+      return chr(codepoint)
 
   def readJSONString(self, skipContext):
     highSurrogate = None