By Chris Buckley
BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) - Sirens wailed as China pausedin grief on Monday as the country began three days of mourningfor more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck aweek ago.
But the search for survivors in the southwestern provinceof Sichuan went on as families refused to give up hope fortheir loved ones and despite the treacherous conditions.
Hundreds of aftershocks and continuing bad weather hamperedthe rescue operation. The Transport Ministry reported on Mondaythat more than 200 relief workers had been buried by mudflowsin recent days.
Details were not immediately available. It was unclearwhether any of those buried had been pulled out alive.
There have been numerous rockslides from unstable mountainslopes, and blocked rivers swollen by heavy rain havethreatened to burst their banks.
Across the vast country of 1.3 billion people, air raidsirens and car, train and ship horns sounded to "wail in grief"at 2.28 p.m. (7.28 a.m. British time), the exact time the quakehit a week ago. People everywhere observed a three-minutesilence.
All public entertainment had been halted. The Olympic torchrelay was suspended. The national flag flew at half mast inBeijing's Tiananmen Square.
In Beichuan, one of the worst hit towns in Sichuan, troopsand other rescuers created makeshift wreaths from twigsstripped from trees and scrap paper pulled from debris.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the futuresexchanges in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian halted trading forthree minutes from 2.28 p.m.
SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS
In Beichuan, relatives continued to travel back into thedisaster zone to look for family members and see the damage forthemselves.
"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.
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 a coal mine.
But seven days after the quake, rescuers mostly had thegruesome job of recovering decomposing bodies. Dozens werepulled 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.
Donations from home and abroad have topped 6 billion yuan(440 million pounds).
(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence andRoger Crabb)