diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index b602e26..2711778 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -28,6 +28,8 @@
 
 BUG FIXES
 
+PIG-4821: Pig chararray field with special UTF-8 chars as part of tuple join key produces wrong results in Tez (rohini)
+
 PIG-4860: Loading data using OrcStorage() accepts only default FileSystem path (beriaanirudh via rohini)
 
 PIG-4867: -stop_on_failure does not work with Tez (rohini)
diff --git a/src/org/apache/pig/data/utils/SedesHelper.java b/src/org/apache/pig/data/utils/SedesHelper.java
index 1a73a77..f0be7c1 100644
--- a/src/org/apache/pig/data/utils/SedesHelper.java
+++ b/src/org/apache/pig/data/utils/SedesHelper.java
@@ -61,25 +61,25 @@
     public static void writeChararray(DataOutput out, String s) throws IOException {
         // a char can take up to 3 bytes in the modified utf8 encoding
         // used by DataOutput.writeUTF, so use UNSIGNED_SHORT_MAX/3
-        if (s.length() < BinInterSedes.UNSIGNED_SHORT_MAX / 3) {
+        byte[] utfBytes = s.getBytes(BinInterSedes.UTF8);
+        int length = utfBytes.length;
+        if (length < BinInterSedes.UNSIGNED_SHORT_MAX) {
             out.writeByte(BinInterSedes.SMALLCHARARRAY);
-            out.writeUTF(s);
+            out.writeShort(length);
         } else {
-            byte[] utfBytes = s.getBytes(BinInterSedes.UTF8);
-            int length = utfBytes.length;
-
             out.writeByte(BinInterSedes.CHARARRAY);
             out.writeInt(length);
-            out.write(utfBytes);
         }
+        out.write(utfBytes);
     }
 
     public static String readChararray(DataInput in, byte type) throws IOException {
+        int size;
         if (type == BinInterSedes.SMALLCHARARRAY) {
-            return in.readUTF();
+            size = in.readUnsignedShort();
+        } else {
+            size = in.readInt();
         }
-
-        int size = in.readInt();
         byte[] buf = new byte[size];
         in.readFully(buf);
         return new String(buf, BinInterSedes.UTF8);