Zhejiang Province and Shanghai Municipality in east China are recovering from the carnage wrought by Typhoon Masta, which swept across the area over the weekend.

Shanghai has almost finished cleaning up operations following the natural disaster.

At 8:50 AM yesterday, Shanghai Hongqiao Airport welcomed the landing of the last Shanghai-bound flight to have been delayed by the storm. The hurricane stranded nearly 100,000 people at airports in Shanghai, other provinces and even abroad.

The 160,000 people who were evacuated from construction sites and substandard houses are now returning.

Reconstruction work has begun across the whole province of Zhejiang and life is on its way back to normal, according to local officials.

Sun Huanren was busy repairing and reinforcing his damaged ponds' dykes yesterday. Most of his shrimps were washed away during floods caused by the typhoon.

"I'm trying to resume normal operations as soon as possible to lessen the impact of the losses," said Sun, 49, a farmer in Xiangshan County, east China's Zhejiang Province.

Sun's aquiculture farm suffered a loss of over 520,000 yuan (US$64,200) in the typhoon, which hit the province on Saturday.

"The typhoon destroyed my farm," sighed Sun, adding that he planned to borrow money to restart business soon.

Having experienced typhoons several times, Sun now considers the typhoon as an "old friend" who comes to visit every July or August.

"It's no good crying over spilt milk, we have to learn from these storms and become stronger," said a defiant Sun.

Besides remedial work, Sun said he would construct deep dykes to prepare for the possible onslaught of typhoons in the future.

Like Sun, thousands of farmers in Zhejiang suffered great losses in Typhoon Masta, which damaged over 5,333 hectares of fish farms in Xiangshan alone.

About 3,000 factories and workshops, which had stopped production in Yuhuan County of Zhejiang when the typhoon arrived, resumed production yesterday.

Teams of agri-technicians arrived in Taizhou, Wenzhou and Ningbo, three of the worst-hit areas of Zhejiang, to instruct farmers on how to rescue damaged crops and prevent disease among poultry, according to reports from the Provincial Agriculture Bureau.

In Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, the shores of West Lake were once again crowded with tourists.

Weather forecasters predict that high temperatures are expected to return in the next few days in Hangzhou, ending the cool weather brought by the typhoon,

However, the prices of vegetables and fruits rose slightly at markets in Hangzhou.

"The price of watermelons produced in Taizhou will keep on rising as most of them were destroyed by the typhoon," said a local vendor.

Shanghai was ravaged by Matsa for 41 hours from Friday night, has caused six deaths and more than 100 million yuan (US$12.3 million) worth of damage.

In Shanghai, at about 10 PM on Friday, strong winds flattened a shack near a construction site in the campus of Jiaotong University, killing one and injuring two.

The next morning, a man who was attempting to repair storm damage to his house was blown from his roof and died.

Four other fatalities were reported on Sunday morning, all having being electrocuted by appliances soaked in the water or while walking in the flooded streets.

Anxin Agricultural Insurance Co, the only specialized agricultural insurance company in the city, had received more than 300 loss claims by Sunday afternoon. It is estimated that farmers have suffered losses worth about 35 million yuan (US$4.3 million).

Food markets have witnessed an average price rise of between 20 and 50 percent for vegetables.

Shanghai's 110 emergency hotline received a record 80,000 calls from Saturday to Sunday morning, most of which reported the falling of trees, damage to houses, power cuts and flooding.

More than 4,600 trees were also blown down by the storm.

(China Daily August 9, 2005)