jsonfield (longtext) returning as bytes

import mariadb

import json

db = mariadb.connect(host='xxx', user='yyy', password='zzz', database='temp')

qr = db.cursor(buffered=True)

qr.execute('''create table tmp_json(

    id int unsigned not null primary key,

    myJson json)''')

qr.execute('show columns from tmp_json')

for col in qr:

    print(col)

# Returns:

# ('id', 'int(10) unsigned', 'NO', 'PRI', None, '')

# ('myJson', 'longtext', 'YES', '', None, '')

content = {'a': 'aaa', 'b': 'bbb', 'c': 123}

qr.execute('insert into tmp_json (id, myJson) values (?, ?)', (1, json.dumps(content)))

qr.execute('select myJson from tmp_json where id=1')

myJson, = qr.fetchone()

print(myJson, type(myJson))

# Returns:

# b'{"a": "aaa", "b": "bbb", "c": 123}' <class 'bytes'>

qr.execute('drop table tmp_json')