Difficult process

The first difficulty she encountered was that domestic flights were suspended in April as Shanghai was hit by the new wave of cases, and only a few rail services kept running.

Secondly, the city's public transportation system was suspended, which meant she would have had to walk to railway stations and airports－provided she could get out of her community in the first place.

"That would have been an exhausting journey," Hao said. She estimated that it might have taken almost an entire day to walk to the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, more than 25 kilometers from her apartment.

"I had no option but to wait－wait for more train tickets to become available and for metro services to resume," she said.

Zhu Yidan faced a similar dilemma. The native of Wuhan, Hubei province, arrived in Shanghai on a business trip in early April. At the time, the auditor realized that the number of cases was growing rapidly, but she focused almost exclusively on her work and did not think about the epidemic too much.

She began to realize that she faced a long departure process on April 18 when she was walking out of the Hongqiao Railway Station.

That day, the 23-year-old had bought a ticket for a train that was supposed to pass through Shanghai before heading to Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province. However, when she arrived at Hongqiao, she was informed that the train would not stop at the station.

"I had spent a lot of time on social media platforms and traveling apps to get that ticket. All I wanted was to leave Shanghai, no matter where I went. I made great efforts to find someone to take me to the railway station, which was another big challenge during the lockdown. I finally paid a driver 1,000 yuan for the one-way journey," she said.

"So, when I heard that I couldn't get on the train, I crumbled and my mind went blank. I felt so helpless while standing outside the station, looking up at the sky."

In the end, she had to call the driver back. After bargaining with him, she paid a further 600 yuan to be taken downtown so she could find a new hotel.