Python-сообщество

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import MySQLdb
import string
db = MySQLdb.connect(host='localhost', user='root', passwd='83448344f', db='tests', use_unicode=True)
db.set_character_set('utf8')
cursor = db.cursor()
cursor.execute('SET NAMES utf8;')
cursor.execute('SET CHARACTER SET utf8;')
cursor.execute('SET character_set_connection=utf8;')
sql = """SELECT `name` FROM `city` ORDER BY `name` DESC"""
cursor.execute(sql)
data =  cursor.fetchall()
# перебираем записи
for rec in data:
    print rec
db.close()

(u'\u0421\u0430\u043d\u043a\u0442-\u041f\u0435\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0443\u0440\u0433',)
(u'\u0421\u0430\u043c\u0430\u0440\u0430',)
(u'\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430',)
(u'\u041a\u0430\u0437\u0430\u043d\u044c',)
(u'\u0412\u0435\u043b\u0438\u043a\u0438\u0439 \u041d\u043e\u0432\u0433\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0434',)

for rec in data:
    print rec[0]

class Foo(object):
    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value
    def __repr__(self):
        return "<class Foo instance in repr>"
    def __str__(self):
        return str("value=%s" % self.value)
t = (Foo(1), Foo(2), Foo(3))
print t
for foo in t:
    print foo

print repr(dict_or_list_or_tuple).decode("unicode_escape")