'I'm already an old woman. Now I have to run for it with my father and the little girl,' she said. 'Everything in my hometown is gone - houses, money and my great-niece's mother.'

The woman had hardly been outside Sichuan before but the family was relying on her for the journey. She tried her best to get the small group on a train going to where her son and daughter-in-law worked as migrant labourers.

Three women and their babies from Sangzao township in An county were luckier. They paid ticket scalpers to get on a train for Hangzhou late last night. 'We are all childhood friends and have been working in Zhejiang factories in Jiaqing and Hangzhou together,' said Chen Fangmei, one of the trio. 'We quit our jobs and rented a car to go back home on May 14 to look for our family and check on the property losses.'

In the meantime, their husbands have had to keep working in Zhejiang, despite the worries about their families. 'They can't quit since their salary is the only resource to support the family,' Ms Chen said.

'Anyway, I am so lucky, since our parents were farming outside when the quake happened. I know most people in the town's high-rise buildings died.'

Like Ms Chen and her husband, most young people in An county work in cities and leave their children with their parents in the countryside. Ms Chen said all they had wanted was to have a new, big house in their hometown.

Their dream came true two years ago when they built a two-storey house, but then everything turned to rubble.

Ms Chen's parents refused to go with her to Hangzhou because they wanted to wait for local authorities to pay compensation and rebuild.

'We can only keep working hard and save to build another house,' she said. 'But that's easy to say.'