Strong gusts of wind ripped through the Chinese capital on Saturday afternoon, winding up the "golden" holiday week which also saw nasty weather in Guangdong.

Fifty-nine-year-old Beijinger Jia saw a tree coming towards his face when he opened his eyes after a short nap.

A gale tore up the 20-meter-high tree by the roots then smashed it into Jia's one-storey house in Xi'anmen Street in downtown Beijing.

"Fortunately I woke up and the broken windows did not hurt me," said Jia. The huge tree, whose trunk was more than 80 centimeters in diameter, blocked the gate of Jia's 9-square-metre house and broke a water pipe.

Jia's wife, who was chatting with neighbors nearby, rushed out after hearing a big bang, only to find Jia was trapped in their house and could not get out.

She called 110 for help and police arrived 15 minutes later. With their help, Jia managed to escape the crumbling house from a small window.

Grandma Yang, 74, also tasted the extreme power of gales for the first time.

On Saturday afternoon when she was buying some food at an open-air outlet near her house, a huge billboard suddenly darted towards her and hit her head.

The board, 2 meters long and 1 meter wide, was blown down by a strong gust of wind and hit three people in a row, including Yang, in an alley in Xuanwu District.

Yang, who was the most seriously injured, had a wound in her face sewn up with more than 10 stitches at a hospital nearby.

The strong gales also forced three planes that should have landed at Beijing Capital International Airport on Saturday afternoon to change route and come into Tianjin Municipality, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The three planes only flew to Beijing nearly two hours later when the roaring wind had calmed down, said the newspaper.

In Beihai Park, the former Imperial Winter Palace in Beijing, more than 300 pleasure boats were stranded at the centre of a lake and could not reach the dock on Saturday afternoon.

The park management office dispatched seven lifeboats to get the tourists back to land. It took nearly two hours to finish the job, the Beijing Times reported.

According to the municipal meteorological observatory, Saturday's winds reached gale force 6 to 7 in most parts of Beijing and even topped force 10 in Shunyi District.

Zhang Mingying, a senior engineer at the observatory, said a gale force 10 wind is 16 to 24 meters per second and can uproot trees.

In south China's Guangdong Province, hailstorms swept parts of the province last week, destroying houses and crops and killing poultry.

The city of Zhaoqing in western Guangdong was hit hard by hailstorms on May 3 and 4, the third time the city has recorded hailstorms this year.

In Mocun Town in Zhaoqing, which was hit the worst, 906 hectares of crops were affected, 85,500 poultry killed and 2,125 houses destroyed.

The direct economic loss was 7.7 million yuan (US$928,000), according to local authorities.

A hailstone as big as 3 kilograms was seen in Hetai Town, where eight villages were hit by a hailstorm. The roofs of some houses were completely torn off.

(China Daily May 9, 2005)