diff --git a/dev/create-release/spark-rm/Dockerfile b/dev/create-release/spark-rm/Dockerfile
index 12195f556107..3ba8e9792961 100644
--- a/dev/create-release/spark-rm/Dockerfile
+++ b/dev/create-release/spark-rm/Dockerfile
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 # Includes:
 # * Java 8
 # * Ivy
-# * Python/PyPandoc (2.7.15/3.6.7)
+# * Python (2.7.15/3.6.7)
 # * R-base/R-base-dev (3.6.1)
 # * Ruby 2.3 build utilities
 
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ ENV DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN true
 ARG APT_INSTALL="apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y"
 
 ARG BASE_PIP_PKGS="setuptools wheel"
-ARG PIP_PKGS="pyopenssl pypandoc numpy sphinx"
+ARG PIP_PKGS="pyopenssl numpy sphinx"
 
 # Install extra needed repos and refresh.
 # - CRAN repo
diff --git a/dev/requirements.txt b/dev/requirements.txt
index 3fdd3425ffcc..baea9213dbc9 100644
--- a/dev/requirements.txt
+++ b/dev/requirements.txt
@@ -2,5 +2,4 @@ flake8==3.5.0
 jira==1.0.3
 PyGithub==1.26.0
 Unidecode==0.04.19
-pypandoc==1.3.3
 sphinx
diff --git a/dev/run-pip-tests b/dev/run-pip-tests
index 1294a9096fb9..470f21e69d46 100755
--- a/dev/run-pip-tests
+++ b/dev/run-pip-tests
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ for python in "${PYTHON_EXECS[@]}"; do
     fi
     # Upgrade pip & friends if using virtual env
     if [ ! -n "$USE_CONDA" ]; then
-      pip install --upgrade pip pypandoc wheel numpy
+      pip install --upgrade pip wheel numpy
     fi
 
     echo "Creating pip installable source dist"
diff --git a/docs/README.md b/docs/README.md
index 5197fc55f6b5..22039871cf63 100644
--- a/docs/README.md
+++ b/docs/README.md
@@ -37,16 +37,30 @@ installed. Also install the following libraries:
 
 ```sh
 $ sudo gem install jekyll jekyll-redirect-from rouge
-# Following is needed only for generating API docs
-$ sudo pip install sphinx pypandoc mkdocs numpy
-$ sudo Rscript -e 'install.packages(c("knitr", "devtools", "testthat", "rmarkdown"), repos="https://cloud.r-project.org/")'
-$ sudo Rscript -e 'devtools::install_version("roxygen2", version = "5.0.1", repos="https://cloud.r-project.org/")'
 ```
 
 Note: If you are on a system with both Ruby 1.9 and Ruby 2.0 you may need to replace gem with gem2.0.
 
+### R Documentation
+
+If you'd like to generate R documentation, you'll need to [install Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/installing.html)
+and install these libraries:
+
+```sh
+$ sudo Rscript -e 'install.packages(c("knitr", "devtools", "testthat", "rmarkdown"), repos="https://cloud.r-project.org/")'
+$ sudo Rscript -e 'devtools::install_version("roxygen2", version = "5.0.1", repos="https://cloud.r-project.org/")'
+```
+
 Note: Other versions of roxygen2 might work in SparkR documentation generation but `RoxygenNote` field in `$SPARK_HOME/R/pkg/DESCRIPTION` is 5.0.1, which is updated if the version is mismatched.
 
+### API Documentation
+
+To generate API docs for any language, you'll need to install these libraries:
+
+```sh
+$ sudo pip install sphinx mkdocs numpy
+```
+
 ## Generating the Documentation HTML
 
 We include the Spark documentation as part of the source (as opposed to using a hosted wiki, such as
diff --git a/python/setup.py b/python/setup.py
index 965927a5694b..40b49aaeeb27 100755
--- a/python/setup.py
+++ b/python/setup.py
@@ -153,21 +153,15 @@ def _supports_symlinks():
     # will search for SPARK_HOME with Python.
     scripts.append("pyspark/find_spark_home.py")
 
-    # Parse the README markdown file into rst for PyPI
-    long_description = "!!!!! missing pandoc do not upload to PyPI !!!!"
-    try:
-        import pypandoc
-        long_description = pypandoc.convert('README.md', 'rst')
-    except ImportError:
-        print("Could not import pypandoc - required to package PySpark", file=sys.stderr)
-    except OSError:
-        print("Could not convert - pandoc is not installed", file=sys.stderr)
+    with open('README.md') as f:
+        long_description = f.read()
 
     setup(
         name='pyspark',
         version=VERSION,
         description='Apache Spark Python API',
         long_description=long_description,
+        long_description_content_type="text/markdown",
         author='Spark Developers',
         author_email='dev@spark.apache.org',
         url='https://github.com/apache/spark/tree/master/python',
@@ -213,7 +207,6 @@ def _supports_symlinks():
         scripts=scripts,
         license='http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0',
         install_requires=['py4j==0.10.8.1'],
-        setup_requires=['pypandoc'],
         extras_require={
             'ml': ['numpy>=1.7'],
             'mllib': ['numpy>=1.7'],