title: How can I use emoji characters in a Velocity Template
body: <p>I am trying to use emoji characters in my velocity templates. The templates are being read into a Java string using</p>
  <pre><code>Template template = getVelocityEngine().getTemplate(templateRef, &quot;UTF-8&quot;);
  
  VelocityContext context = new VelocityContext(); 
  
  StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
  template.merge( context, writer );
  result = writer.toString();
  </code></pre>
  <p>In the template, I tried to escape the smiley face like: \xF0\x9F\x98\x81</p>