django.db.utils.OperationalError: 1366

The standard way to get utf8mb4 working in Django is to specify it as DATABASES['default']['OPTIONS'] in settings.py, like this:

    'OPTIONS': {'charset': 'utf8mb4'},

The workaround is to manually call SET NAMES; edit lib/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py and add a conn.query("SET NAMES utf8mb4") line into DatabaseWrapper.get_new_connection, so it looks like this:

    def get_new_connection(self, conn_params):
        conn = Database.connect(**conn_params)
        conn.encoders[SafeText] = conn.encoders[six.text_type]
        conn.encoders[SafeBytes] = conn.encoders[bytes]
        conn.query("SET NAMES utf8mb4")
        return conn

Make sure that you also have utf8mb4 enabled on the backend.  The migration commands in the App Engine Django tutorial result in a Cloud SQL instance configured for utf8.  I needed to run these commands to enable utf8mb4 on the two tables:

    ALTER TABLE ap_ruckus_brushstatus CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
    ALTER TABLE ap_ruckus_brushstatus CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4;
Let me know if that fixes your problem. There is a real fix in the pipeline but no timetable for it to be out.

     'OPTIONS': {
         'autocommit': True,
         'charset': 'utf8mb4',
     },