Problem with Indy TidTCPServer/Client

I am using Delphi 7 and Indy 9.

I need to pass a Unicode string with Japanese characters from my
server to my client.  I am encoding the widestring with UTF8Decode
before sending.  I have found that if the server does a writeln
with the chr($EF) in the string, the client's readln will read a
null string with neither side indicating any error.

So, 1) is this a bug or by design?
2) how can I encode the string so I can send it through the
socket?

Thanks!