diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index ae982e1..4956da5 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ Changelog
 2.13.5 (unreleased)
 -------------------
 
+- Use 'utf-8' to decode non-unicode strings instead of 'latin-1'.
 
 2.13.4 (2017-02-15)
 -------------------
diff --git a/src/DocumentTemplate/cDocumentTemplate.c b/src/DocumentTemplate/cDocumentTemplate.c
index 47ae784..1800ce2 100644
--- a/src/DocumentTemplate/cDocumentTemplate.c
+++ b/src/DocumentTemplate/cDocumentTemplate.c
@@ -925,7 +925,7 @@ _join_unicode(PyObject *prejoin)
             PyObject *item = PyList_GetItem(list,i);
             if(PyString_Check(item))
             {
-                PyObject *unicode = PyUnicode_DecodeLatin1(PyString_AsString(item),PyString_Size(item),NULL);
+                PyObject *unicode = PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8(PyString_AsString(item),PyString_Size(item),NULL);
                 if(unicode)
                 {
                     PyList_SetItem(list,i,unicode);
diff --git a/src/DocumentTemplate/tests/testDTMLUnicode.py b/src/DocumentTemplate/tests/testDTMLUnicode.py
index 1d98bc4..659a859 100644
--- a/src/DocumentTemplate/tests/testDTMLUnicode.py
+++ b/src/DocumentTemplate/tests/testDTMLUnicode.py
@@ -55,25 +55,25 @@ def testAB(self):
     def testUB(self):
         html=self.doc_class('<dtml-var a><dtml-var b>')
         expected = u'hello\xc8'
-        res = html(a=u'hello',b=chr(200))
+        res = html(a=u'hello',b='\xc3\x88')
         assert res == expected, `res`
 
     def testUB2(self):
         html=self.doc_class('<dtml-var a><dtml-var b>')
         expected = u'\u07d0\xc8'
-        res = html(a=unichr(2000),b=chr(200))
+        res = html(a=unichr(2000),b='\xc3\x88')
         assert res == expected, `res`
 
     def testUnicodeStr(self):
         html=self.doc_class('<dtml-var a><dtml-var b>')
         expected = u'\u07d0\xc8'
-        res = html(a=force_str(unichr(2000)),b=chr(200))
+        res = html(a=force_str(unichr(2000)),b='\xc3\x88')
         assert res == expected, `res`
 
     def testUqB(self):
         html=self.doc_class('<dtml-var a html_quote><dtml-var b>')
         expected = u'he&gt;llo\xc8'
-        res = html(a=u'he>llo',b=chr(200))
+        res = html(a=u'he>llo',b='\xc3\x88')
         assert res == expected, `res`
 
     def testSize(self):