diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index a622408..65d54ce 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -14,6 +14,12 @@
   inside of a tag element that doesn't allow 
   them raises a CompileException instead of
   silently failing.
+
+- Added a try/except around "import markupsafe".
+  This to support GAE which can't run markupsafe.
+  [ticket:151] No idea whatsoever if the 
+  install_requires in setup.py also breaks GAE, 
+  couldn't get an answer on this.
   
 0.3.4
 - Now using MarkupSafe for HTML escaping,
diff --git a/mako/filters.py b/mako/filters.py
index ce11168..23b77e1 100644
--- a/mako/filters.py
+++ b/mako/filters.py
@@ -8,7 +8,6 @@
 import re, urllib, htmlentitydefs, codecs
 from StringIO import StringIO
 from mako import util
-import markupsafe
 
 xml_escapes = {
     '&' : '&',
@@ -21,13 +20,18 @@
 # XXX: " is valid in HTML and XML
 #      ' is not valid HTML, but is valid XML
 
-def html_escape(string):
-    return markupsafe.escape(string)
-
 def legacy_html_escape(string):
     """legacy HTML escape for non-unicode mode."""
 
     return re.sub(r'([&<"\'>])', lambda m: xml_escapes[m.group()], string)
+
+try:
+    import markupsafe
+    def html_escape(string):
+        return markupsafe.escape(string)
+except ImportError:
+    html_escape = legacy_html_escape
+
     
 def xml_escape(string):
     return re.sub(r'([&<"\'>])', lambda m: xml_escapes[m.group()], string)