diff --git a/mercurial/crecord.py b/mercurial/crecord.py
--- a/mercurial/crecord.py
+++ b/mercurial/crecord.py
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ stringio = util.stringio
 
 # This is required for ncurses to display non-ASCII characters in default user
 # locale encoding correctly.  --immerrr
-locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
+locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, u'')
 
 # patch comments based on the git one
 diffhelptext = _("""# To remove '-' lines, make them ' ' lines (context).