php清理丰富的textarea来显示干净的字符串

I'm trying to clean up a string from a rich textarea. The string is something like:

<p> HI there </p>

The problem is when i use preg_rplace to romove i get an output like:

p Hi there p

Anyone knows how to do this correctly?

This seems like it was made for you

http://php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php