HAIKOU -- Almost 7,000 people boarded ferry and rail services between south China's island province of Hainan and the mainland on Thursday after tropical storm Lekima left China.

More than 3,600 passengers and 500 vehicles got on ships and traveled across the Qiongzhou Strait to the mainland on Thursday morning as local maritime authorities reopened shipping and rail links that had been suspended since Monday.

Rail services between the tourist city of Sanya and provincial capital Haikou, Shanghai and Beijing that were suspended or forced to detour due to the storm had resumed normal operations by Wednesday evening.

Only six of the 149 incoming flights were canceled on Tuesday morning due to bad weather at the Meilan International Airport in Haikou, and no flights have been affected since.

In the southern coastal province of Guangdong, on the opposite side of the strait, more than 3,000 people and 1,500 vehicles boarded vessels on Thursday morning.

Typhoon Lekima, the 15th severe tropical storm this year, made landfall in Sanya at 11:00 p.m. on Tuesday, bringing torrential rains and high winds to almost every city and county in China's southernmost province.

It left China on late Wednesday and swept into Vietnam after killing eight people in the Philippines and forcing more than 225,000 people in China to leave their homes.

China's Ministry of Civil Affairs has sent 1,000 tents to Hainan to help shelter the affected people.

Local authorities said no casualties had yet been reported, and all the 1,064 reservoirs or dam projects in the province remained intact due to prompt protective measures.

Lekima, named after a type of fruit in Vietnam, affected 2.63 million Hainan residents, damaged more than 700 houses and almost 113,000 hectares of crops in the province, incurring 504 million yuan (66.8 million U.S. dollars) in losses, local disaster prevention office said on Thursday.

A marine affairs worker helps a tourist with his life suit on a sightseeing boat in Qionghai City, south China's island province of Hainan, Oct. 4, 2007. Sightseeing programs on sea resumed as strong tropical storm Lekima left China on Thursday. [Xinhua]


Meanwhile, tropical storm Krosa developed into a strong typhoon in the western Pacific on Thursday and is approaching to Taiwan and China's southeast coast.

At 11:00 a.m. Thursday, the center of Krosa was located at 18.8degrees north and 127.6 degrees east, about 940 kilometers southeast of Taiwan, according to the meteorological observatory of Zhejiang Province in east China.

Packing winds of up to 162 km per hour at its eye, Krosa is moving northwest at a speed of 10 km to 15 km per hour and growing stronger.

The observatory warned tourists who plan to visit scenic sites in Zhejiang during the weeklong National Day holiday to adjust their schedules according to weather conditions.

Many parts of northern China are expecting rain and snow weather due to a cold front from the remote northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.