Odd XML behaviour

Is there a way to stop PHPs DOM functions from automatically translating
numeric entities?

I've got a file that includes some numeric entities (… etc). I use
$domdoc->loadXML('filename.xml') and the other dom function to load the
file into an array and display it for editing in a html form. Except
that the entities always get decoded (i.e. turned into single
characters) without me specifically asking for it. The reverse is also
true - if I ask the dom functions to build an xml file that includes a
numeric entity the bloody thing just decodes it again. Is there any way to
get the damn thing to stop decoding them.