diff --git a/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/patch.py b/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/patch.py
index 5931622416..57861db407 100644
--- a/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/patch.py
+++ b/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/patch.py
@@ -251,13 +251,7 @@ def extract(ui, fileobj):
             ui.debug("Content-Type: %s\n" % content_type)
             if content_type not in ok_types:
                 continue
-            if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
-                # The message was surrogateescape encoded, so we need to undo
-                # that.
-                payload = part.get_payload()
-                payload = payload.encode("ascii", errors="surrogateescape")
-            else:
-                payload = part.get_payload(decode=True)
+            payload = part.get_payload(decode=True)
             m = diffre.search(payload)
             if m:
                 hgpatch = False
diff --git a/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/pycompat.py b/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/pycompat.py
index ec46270d73..2b31262729 100644
--- a/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/pycompat.py
+++ b/eden/scm/edenscm/mercurial/pycompat.py
@@ -157,8 +157,10 @@ if sys.version_info[0] >= 3:
 
         ep = email.parser.Parser()
         # disable the "universal newlines" mode, which isn't binary safe.
-        # We'll have to use surrogateescape when encoding the string back to
-        # bytes later.
+        # Note, although we specific ascii+surrogateescape decoding here, we don't have
+        # to specify it elsewhere for reencoding as the email.parser detects the
+        # surrogates and automatically chooses the appropriate encoding.
+        # See: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.8/Lib/email/message.py::get_payload()
         fp = io.TextIOWrapper(
             fp, encoding=r"ascii", errors=r"surrogateescape", newline=chr(10)
         )
diff --git a/eden/scm/tests/test-import-t.py b/eden/scm/tests/test-import-t.py
index 873438b5a7..fecc86a112 100644
--- a/eden/scm/tests/test-import-t.py
+++ b/eden/scm/tests/test-import-t.py
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+# coding=utf-8
 # Copyright (c) Facebook, Inc. and its affiliates.
 # Copyright (c) Mercurial Contributors.
 #
@@ -1497,3 +1498,12 @@ sh % "printf 'diff --git a/a b/b\\nrename from a\\nrename to b'" | "hg import -"
     a not tracked!
     abort: source file 'a' does not exist
     [255]"""
+
+# Verify that utf-8 characters in patches can be imported
+open("unicode.txt", "w").write("echo 🍺")
+sh % "hg commit -Aqm unicode"
+sh % "hg rm unicode.txt"
+sh % "hg commit -qm remove"
+sh % "hg export --rev 'desc(unicode)'" | "hg import -" == r"""
+    applying patch from stdin
+"""