Razor sharp: Chinese student trapped in locked Australian bathroom uses eyebrow shaver to end 6

An overseas student from China has told how she spent six hours trapped inside the bathroom of her Australian dormitory and only managed to escape by cutting away at the locked door with a small eyebrow razor.

The resourceful young woman’s ordeal began on August 20 – the first day in her Melbourne digs – when, after taking a shower, she realised the restroom door was locked from the outside.

The student, surnamed Wen, recalled the upsetting incident in an interview with China.com.cn.

“It was my first day living in the flat, and also my first time taking a shower here. After I finished showering, I discovered that I couldn’t get out,” said Wen.

With no key she realised she was going to have to improvise.

Faced with a door made out of a mixture of wood and paper, Wen grabbed her eyebrow trimmer and began making small incisions in it.

Once she had created small holes in the door, she poured water inside the incisions to soften the structure.

“I spent the first two hours cutting away at the door, then I had to lie down on the floor because I was feeling dizzy, hungry and cold. I knew I had to muster the strength to get up and continue,” Wen recalled.

Eventually, the water-filled incisions weakened the door, at which point she began kicking it with her bare feet until it finally gave way. The whole ordeal lasted six hours.

In a video that has gone viral, it can be seen that the hole created was approximately the size of half a person.

The footage also shows pieces of toilet paper scattered on the floor with messages on them pleading for help written in lipstick.

“My feet and legs were injured with all the kicking,” she said, adding: “In future, I will cherish life more and let my family and friends know my routines.”

Wen’s bathroom predicament has provoked much comment and advice on social media.

One online observer said: “This underscores the importance of taking your phone into the bathroom.”

While another remarked: “She did well to save herself, very clever.”

“The lesson here is that we should all carry a back-up tool for breaking out of a locked bathroom,” said a third.

In February 2021, a young woman from Sichuan province in southwestern China was trapped in a bathroom for more than 30 hours on the first day of the Chinese Spring Festival before she was rescued by tapping on plumbing pipes to alert neighbours.

In March 2023, an actress claimed to have been locked in the bathroom of the luxury Ritz-Carlton hotel for more than three hours before eventually managing to escape by using a hard plastic cable tie.