#单个unicode字符串的长度为1, 单个utf-8字符的长度为3
In [3]: u = u"这是一个中文字符串"
In [4]: len(u)
Out[4]: 9
In [5]: utf8str = u.encode("utf-8")
In [6]: len(utf8str)
Out[6]: 27
In [7]: utf8str
Out[7]: '\xe8\xbf\x99\xe6\x98\xaf\xe4\xb8\x80\xe4\xb8\xaa\xe4\xb8\xad\xe6\x96\x8
7\xe5\xad\x97\xe7\xac\xa6\xe4\xb8\xb2'
In [8]: single_utf8str = u"中".encode("utf-8")
In [9]: single_utf8str
Out[9]: '\xe4\xb8\xad'
In [10]: len(single_utf8str)
Out[10]: 3