ValueError: All strings must be XML compatible: Unicode or ASCII, no NULL bytes

#!/usr/bin/python

from html5lib import HTMLParser, treebuilders
from lxml import etree
p = HTMLParser(
  tree = treebuilders.getTreeBuilder("lxml"),
  namespaceHTMLElements = False
  )
rawdata = u"<td>&#8; &8230;</td>"
t = p.parse(rawdata).getroot()
print t

# from StringIO import StringIO
# from lxml.html import html5parser
# html5parser.parse(StringIO(u"<td>&#9</td>"))

$ ./test2.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./test2.py", line 10, in <module>
    t = p.parse(rawdata).getroot()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/html5parser.py", line 211, in parse
    parseMeta=parseMeta, useChardet=useChardet)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/html5parser.py", line 111, in _parse
    self.mainLoop()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/html5parser.py", line 174, in mainLoop
    self.phase.processCharacters(token)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/html5parser.py", line 948, in processCharacters
    self.tree.insertText(token["data"])
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/treebuilders/_base.py", line 288, in insertText
    parent.insertText(data)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/treebuilders/etree_lxml.py", line 225, in insertText
    builder.Element.insertText(self, data, insertBefore)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/html5lib/treebuilders/etree.py", line 114, in insertText
    self._element.text += data
  File "lxml.etree.pyx", line 821, in lxml.etree._Element.text.__set__ (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:33308)
  File "apihelpers.pxi", line 646, in lxml.etree._setNodeText (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:15287)
  File "apihelpers.pxi", line 1295, in lxml.etree._utf8 (src/lxml/lxml.etree.c:20212)
ValueError: All strings must be XML compatible: Unicode or ASCII, no NULL bytes