diff --git a/src/lxml/tests/test_htmlparser.py b/src/lxml/tests/test_htmlparser.py
index 59b365afd98340a39d9f91cb1837af3fc03efd2a_c3JjL2x4bWwvdGVzdHMvdGVzdF9odG1scGFyc2VyLnB5..d85bb014322d60b5592ee5cd9d3c6b0dd2c158ef_c3JjL2x4bWwvdGVzdHMvdGVzdF9odG1scGFyc2VyLnB5 100644
--- a/src/lxml/tests/test_htmlparser.py
+++ b/src/lxml/tests/test_htmlparser.py
@@ -54,9 +54,5 @@
                          _bytes("page á title").decode('utf8'))
 
     def test_wide_unicode_xml(self):
-        if sys.maxunicode < 1114111:
-            return  # skip test
-        element = self.etree.HTML(_bytes(
-            '<html><body><p>\\U00026007</p></body></html>'
-        ).decode('unicode_escape'))
+        element = self.etree.HTML(u'<html><body><p>\U00026007</p></body></html>')
         p_text = element.findtext('.//p')
@@ -62,7 +58,6 @@
         p_text = element.findtext('.//p')
-        self.assertEqual(1, len(p_text))
-        self.assertEqual(_bytes('\\U00026007').decode('unicode_escape'),
-                         p_text)
+        self.assertEqual(1 if sys.maxunicode >= 1114111 else 2, len(p_text))
+        self.assertEqual(u'\U00026007', p_text)
 
     def test_html_ids(self):
         parser = self.etree.HTMLParser(recover=False)
diff --git a/src/lxml/tests/test_unicode.py b/src/lxml/tests/test_unicode.py
index 59b365afd98340a39d9f91cb1837af3fc03efd2a_c3JjL2x4bWwvdGVzdHMvdGVzdF91bmljb2RlLnB5..d85bb014322d60b5592ee5cd9d3c6b0dd2c158ef_c3JjL2x4bWwvdGVzdHMvdGVzdF91bmljb2RlLnB5 100644
--- a/src/lxml/tests/test_unicode.py
+++ b/src/lxml/tests/test_unicode.py
@@ -35,12 +35,9 @@
         self.assertEqual(uni, tree.text)
 
     def test_wide_unicode_xml(self):
-        if sys.maxunicode < 1114111:
-            return  # skip test
-        tree = etree.XML(_bytes('<p>\\U00026007</p>').decode('unicode_escape'))
-        self.assertEqual(1, len(tree.text))
-        self.assertEqual(_bytes('\\U00026007').decode('unicode_escape'),
-                         tree.text)
+        tree = etree.XML(u'<p>\U00026007</p>')
+        self.assertEqual(1 if sys.maxunicode >= 1114111 else 2, len(tree.text))
+        self.assertEqual(u'\U00026007', tree.text)
 
     def test_unicode_xml_broken(self):
         uxml = ('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>' +