How to properly store UNICODE character code?

Question

PHP

I ran into a problem that when sending a message with a unicode picture (for example \xF0\x9F\x91\x8F) from pure php to the telegram bot, the user receives a picture. And if I save the image code in a separate cell, then when I get it from the database and send it to telegram, I get not a picture, but a text with a code (\xF0\x9F\x91\x8F).
image codes apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode

Answer 1

In general, the problem becomes clearer:
var_dump($row['Unicode']);
var_dump("\xF0\x9F\x92\xA8");
string(16) "\xF0\x9F\x92\x83"
string(4) "" - the picture is displayed here, but for some reason it is not displayed in the toaster.
The question is how to convert the text stored in the database into code?