How to convert a QString to unicode object in python 2?

I had this problem to solve, and I tried to find the safest way. This program illustrates the solution

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
import sys

app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
ed = QtGui.QLineEdit()

def editingFinished():
    # The text() returns a QString, which is unicode-aware
    print type(ed.text())
    # This returns a QByteArray, which is the encoded unicode string in the utf-8 encoding.
    print type(ed.text().toUtf8())
    # Since unicode() accepts a sequence of bytes, the safest and fully controlled way of performing
    # the transformation is to pass the encoded sequence of bytes, and let unicode know it is utf-8 encoded
    print unicode(ed.text().toUtf8(), encoding="UTF-8")

QtCore.QObject.connect(ed, QtCore.SIGNAL("editingFinished()"), editingFinished)
ed.show()

app.exec_()

So the solution is

unicode(qstring_object.toUtf8(), encoding="UTF-8")

Maybe there's another, simpler way that it's also safe, but for now this solution is good enough.