import MySQLdb as mydb

conn = mydb.connect(
    host='localhost',
    user='root',
    passwd='1234',
    db='test',
    charset='utf8mb4',
    use_unicode=False
) 
cur = conn.cursor()
cur.execute("SHOW VARIABLES")

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES WHERE variable_name LIKE 'character\_set\_%' OR variable_name LIKE 'collation%';
+--------------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value              |
+--------------------------+--------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_connection | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_filesystem | binary             |
| character_set_results    | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_system     | utf8               |
| collation_connection     | utf8mb4_general_ci |
| collation_database       | utf8mb4_general_ci |
| collation_server         | utf8mb4_general_ci |
+--------------------------+--------------------+
10 rows in set, 1 warning (0.01 sec)

>>> import binascii
>>> binascii.unhexlify(b"d3f0e0ebfcf1").decode("cp1251")
"Уральс"

select *, @cnt := @cnt + 1 as counter from performance_schema.global_variables cross join (select @cnt := 0) r