A typhoon in the Pacific Ocean with gales of 173 kilometers an hour was on course to hit Taiwan late yesterday, prompting local governments to cancel most work and all school classes today.

Stock and foreign-exchange markets will be closed.

Typhoon Fung Wong, Chinese for phoenix, was moving northwest last night, on course to make landfall early today, Taiwan's weather bureau said.

Railway services and flights in east Taiwan were stopped yesterday.

Trains on the whole island will cease operations this afternoon, while all local airline services will be canceled.

Passenger ships between Taiwan's Kinmen and Xiamen and Quanzhou on the mainland are also on hold.

Taiwanese stacked sand bags at doors and boarded up windows yesterday as Fung Wong approached the island, whipping up waves along its coast and triggering a rock slide that injured a man.

Late yesterday afternoon, the storm was centered about 290km southeast of the city of Hualien in eastern Taiwan, the weather bureau said.

In Keelung in northern Taiwan, winds whipped up giant waves, and hundreds of fishing boats took shelter in port.

Fung Wong will be the second typhoon to hit Taiwan in the past two weeks. On July 18, typhoon Kalmaegi killed at least 20 people on the island.

On the mainland, about 274,300 people had been evacuated by yesterday in Fujian Province, the provincial flood-control headquarters said last night.

More than 52,000 fishing boats had returned to harbor as of 6pm yesterday. Disaster-relief personnel had been helping people on vessels get ashore, said Yang Zhiying, chief of the headquarters.

The provincial weather observatory predicted that the typhoon would make a landfall in Fujian tonight or tomorrow morning, sweeping the province before moving inland to Jiangxi Province.

In Shanghai, flood officials are keeping an eye out for the effects of Fung Wong, which will bring showers or thunderstorms to the city from tonight and lower temperatures.

The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau forecast rain and winds of to 60kmh to continue in the city until Thursday.

Chief eteorologist Fu Yi said the city would cool to a high of 33 degrees Celsius today, with 32 degrees tomorrow.

Fu said the typhoon was unlikely to directly hit Shanghai, as landfall was predicted at Fujian Province.

But unsettled conditions around the typhoon would bring wind and storms, he said.

After Fung Wong abated, skies would turn clear again.

The high yesterday reached 35.3 degrees, the 16th day above 35 so far this summer.

(Agencies, Shanghai Daily, July 28, 2008)