People in Central China's Wuhan enjoy themselves on Wednesday after the city's 76-day lockdown ends. Photos: Li Hao/GT

After a 76-day lockdown, Wuhan on Wednesday lifted the outbound travel ban and people's lives in the city are gradually returning to normal, with transportation and work resuming as well as the normal things people search for online. 

According to data from Baidu, a major search engine in China, searches related to the epidemic have decreased in recent weeks and searches for "weather" and "looks" showed an obvious increase. Searches for "date" and "marriage" increased 36 and 48 percent from the previous week, while "divorce" also increased 21 percent. 

Wuhan also ranks highest for car-hailing searches, followed by Shanghai and Beijing. People also search for procedures about leaving the city and returning to major cities for work. 

For the first week of the lockdown, epidemic, medical aid, personal prevention equipment and deliveries were the top four search categories. But now, people search for daily services, resumption of work, transportation and e-schooling. 

During the lockdown, searches for "bedtime stories" increased 50 percent. Searches for medicine universities in Wuhan increased 133 percent from the same period in the previous year. 

People outside the region are searching for local food and tourist sites as a way to support the hard-hit city. In the past month, searches for reganmian, a local noodle dish, among other snacks have increased 30 percent from the previous year.

People in South China's Guangdong Province have been the most active to search popular Wuhan sightseeing spots in the past 30 days, followed by Hubei's neighboring province Hunan and East China's Jiangsu Province.

Global Times