By Chris Buckley
BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - Flags flew at half mast acrossChina and the Olympic torch relay was suspended as the countrybegan three days of mourning on Monday for more than 30,000victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago.
But the search for survivors went on in the strickensouthwestern province of Sichuan as families refused to give uphope for their loved ones, and rescuers found two more peoplealive in the rubble.
Around the vast country of 1.3 billion people, air raidsirens and car, train and ship horns will sound to "wail ingrief" at 2.28 p.m. (7.28 a.m. British time), the time thequake hit a week ago, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijingflew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn.
"I have come today with a heavy heart," said Liu Xianzeng,watching the ceremony in Tiananmen Square. "I feel for thevictims of the earthquake and soldiers who are helping there."
Public entertainment was halted and a three-minute silencewas also to be observed to mark exactly a week since the quake,the government said.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the futuresexchanges in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian would halt tradingfor three minutes from 2.28 p.m.
In Beichuan, one of the worst hit towns in Sichuan,relatives continued to travel back into the disaster zone tolook for family members and see the damage for themselves.
"It's a good idea but maybe it's a bit early,' said ZhouWanli of the national state of mourning, sitting in the back ofa truck heading into Beichuan.
"All we can care about for the time being is finding ourrelatives. We don't want to memorialise them if we don't evenknow if they're alive or dead," he said.
SURVIVORS RESCUED
The official death toll from the 7.9 magnitude quake standsat nearly 32,500.
Some 220,000 people are reported injured and a further9,500 are thought to be still buried under the rubble inSichuan. Most are feared dead, but some are still being pulledout alive.
Statistics from past earthquakes show victims have survivedup to nearly a fortnight under rubble.
There was a burst of elation in ruined Beichuan, when onewoman was found alive.
Wang Hongguo, head of the rescue team, said she had foundher under a mass of concrete. "We had to pull her out verygradually. She looked quite sturdy, so she might pull through,"Wang said.
Rescuers also found a 50-year-old woman alive in thewreckage of a residential building at the Tianchi Coal Mine.
But seven days after the quake, rescuers mostly had thegruesome job of recovering decomposing bodies. Dozens of bodieswere pulled from the rubble in Beichuan on Monday, and rescuersscattered lime and splashed disinfectant to prevent disease.
Even with hundreds of troops poring over the wreckage, someusing specialised equipment and sniffer dogs, others carried onthe search themselves.
Farmer Wang Hongchen and his wife Chen Guangfen scrambledover hundreds of metres of rubble to look for their son, whoworked as a mobile phone repair man in the town.
"I think there's still hope. He worked on the first floor,so if he was lucky there would have been space for him tosurvive," Wang said, in between shouting out his son's nameover the ruins.
"There's nothing I want more than to find him alive," addedChen. "Other people who know their relatives have died can callthis a memorial day, or a funeral, but not me yet."
Officials have tried to keep people from the area becauseof aftershocks and a build-up of water in blocked rivers.Xinhua said the most dangerous mass of water was only about 3km (2 miles) upstream from Beichuan.
Rescuers had yet to reach all the stricken villages, Xinhuareported. By late Sunday, 77 villages were still cut off.
China says it expects the final death toll to exceed50,000.
Huge tent cities have sprung up in Sichuan to accommodateabout 4.8 million people who lost their homes. A ForeignMinistry spokesman appealed to the international community toprovide more tents, Xinhua reported.
Donations from home and abroad have topped 6 billion yuan(440 million pounds).
(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence andRoger Crabb)