Freezing weather kept a grip on much of China on Monday and moved south, the result of a cold wave that came from Inner Mongolia over the weekend.

The cold wave was the second this winter.

Yantai and Weihai, two port cities in east China's Shandong Province, had heavy snow, and highways remained closed on Monday.

Ferries crossing the Bohai Sea Strait to connect both cities with Dalian, in Liaoning Province, were cancelled because of strong wind.

Saturday's cold wave also generated snow on Sunday in Tianjin, near Beijing, and six other cities in Hebei Province, another neighbor of the national capital, according to weather services in Tianjin and Hebei.

Nine freeways passing through Hebei which had been closed by snow reopened on Monday.

The Tianjin weather service said the snowfall on Saturday night stopped early on Sunday. The city's Hangu District on the coast had the most snow, with 11.7 mm.

More than 900 passengers were stranded at Tianjin Airport which closed at 9:00 PM on Saturday, canceling about 100 flights.

The airport remained closed on Sunday. Ground services arranged lodging for 800 passengers, and used buses to transport another 100 passengers to Beijing by train to take flights there.

The airport reopened late Monday after firefighters and armed police cleared the runways of ice, according to an airport source.

Snow skipped Beijing's downtown, but it brought bone-chilling winds through the capital on Sunday, driving the temperature to minus 12 degrees Celsius. The city's low was minus eight degrees Celsius on Monday.

Nearly 1,000 vessels were stranded in Shanghai Port between Sunday and Monday as wind speeds reached 24 meters per second at the mouth of the Yangtze River, according to the Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration.

Some ships drifted from the berths as their cables broke due to the strong wind. Ship collisions occurred more frequently than normal. The traffic could not start until the wind weakened, it said, adding that no casualties were reported.

The impact of the cold wave was also felt Monday at offshore waters near Xiamen, a port city in Fujian Province, east China. There are two ferry services plying the sea waters between Jinmen, an outlying isle off Taiwan, and Xiamen.

The ferry line that runs from Wutong dock in Xiamen was closed Monday, while the other ferry line running from Dongdu dock was in service for most of Monday, but was forced to be pulled out of service at 3:00 PM on Monday.

A source of Xiamen General Checkpoint, which oversees the ferry service on both lines, said he could not give the exact date for the reopening of the two shipping routes.

Temperatures will be below normal in most parts of the country for the first two days of the week but will rise as the cold front moves on. The temperatures might even be above-normal after the chill dissipates, the National Meteorological Center said in a Web statement.

The center predicted strong wind and falling temperatures in the northeastern, northern and eastern parts of China on Wednesday and Thursday and precipitation almost everywhere beginning on Friday.

(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2008)