[Python] Converting emojis to Unicode and vice versa in python 3

I am trying to convert an emoji into its Unicode in python 3. For example I would have the emoji and from this would like to get the corresponding unicode 'U+1F600'. Similarly I would like to convert the 'U+1F600' back to . Now I have read the documentation and tried several options but pythons behaviour confuses me here.

>>> x = ''
>>> y = x.encode('utf-8')
>>> y
b'\xf0\x9f\x98\x80'


The emoji is converted to a byte object.

>>> z = y.decode('utf-8')
>>> z
''


Converted the byte object back to the emoji, so far so good.

Now, taking the unicode for the emoji:

>>> c = '\U0001F600'
>>> d = c.encode('utf-8')
>>> d
>>> b'\xf0\x9f\x98\x80'


This prints out the byte encoding again.

>>> d.decode('utf-8')
>>> ''


This prints the emoji out again. I really can't figure out how to convert solely between the Unicode and the emoji.

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