diff --git a/spacy/tests/test_pickle.py b/spacy/tests/test_pickle.py
index 540e54486..2577f58a6 100644
--- a/spacy/tests/test_pickle.py
+++ b/spacy/tests/test_pickle.py
@@ -5,6 +5,11 @@ import pickle
 import pytest
 import tempfile
 
+try:
+    unicode
+except NameError:
+    unicode = str
+
 @pytest.mark.models
 def test_pickle_english(EN):
     file_ = io.BytesIO()
@@ -21,7 +26,7 @@ def test_cloudpickle_to_file(EN):
     p = cloudpickle.CloudPickler(f)
     p.dump(EN)
     f.close()
-    loaded_en = cloudpickle.load(open(f.name))
+    loaded_en = cloudpickle.load(open(f.name, 'rb'))
     os.unlink(f.name)
     doc = loaded_en(unicode('test parse'))
     assert len(doc) == 2