Travelers heading for southeastern coastal regions like Fujian and Guangdong provinces to celebrate the coming Mid-Autumn Festival may encounter stormy weather instead of a full moon this year.

The approaching Typhoon Meranti, the 14th of the year, has grown into the world’s strongest typhoon of 2016. It is expected to make landfall on Thursday morning, the festival day, Xu Yinglong, chief forecaster at the Central Meteorological Observatory, said on Tuesday.

The storm will weaken as it moves northward but will affect Jiangxi province on Friday, he said, adding that another typhoon will immediately follow and is expected to make landfall soon.

Residents in China’s vast eastern and southern provinces – Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu – as well as Shanghai, will see torrential rains and strong wind gusts from Wednesday. The storm is expected to last for the whole three-day holiday, Thursday to Saturday, Xu said.

Strongest typhoon of the year Meranti

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The risks of geological disasters triggered by downpours and winds will also climb in coming days, the national weather authority warned. It issued an orange alert, the second-highest level, on Tuesday.

In addition, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters also issued its second-highest emergency warning for the approaching typhoon and sent seven teams to help ensure public security in areas expected to be hit.

Several tourist attractions in the affected regions, including Gulangyu Island and Wuyi Mountain in Fujian, may be engulfed by the wild storm during the holiday, said Hu Xiao, another observatory expert.

Visitors to affected regions are warned to stay away from swelling rivers that in ordinary years provide spectacular views – especially the Qiantang River, Hu said.

He added some flights would be delayed or cancelled during the period, and visitors taking buses and vessels would be affected as well.

From July 1 until this week, China has seen the births of 16 typhoons, about 4 per cent more than the seasonal average. In addition, more typhoons have made landfall in southern coastal regions.

Residents in many parts of the country will not see the full moon on Mid-Autumn Day because of cloudy weather.

But it’s likely to be visible in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and some areas in Hebei, Shandong and Henan provinces, experts said.

Xu Wei contributed to this story.

With the Mid-Autumn Festival coming tomorrow, who doesn’t want a box of sweet mooncakes? But for some employees of Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, they may have paid too high a price for the delicacy.

The company confirmed on Tuesday that it has fired four employees after they hacked into the internal sales system and snap-ordered 124 boxes of mooncakes made exclusively for Alibaba employees.

Every employee can get a free box of mooncakes featuring the Alibaba mascot and cultural elements as Mid-Autumn Festival gifts every year. As many employees hope to buy more for their friends and families, the company decided to sell the limited extra ones at cost through, unsurprisingly, an online order system.

However, four employees working for Alibaba’s cyber security department were caught “cheating using technology” and hoarding 124 boxes in total.

“This is the fastest dismissal I have ever experienced. It may also rank high on the list for goofballs,”an anonymous user said on Zhihu, China’s equivalent of Quora, alleging being one of the cheaters.

The user said that he tried to buy a box of mooncakes through the sales page but failed. After finding out that others got the cakes through their own home-made programs, he made his own plug-in.

While he was busy doing other work, he didn’t notice his programme had ordered 16 boxes. He was then “caught off guard” when being asked to leave only two hours after the fraud scheme.

Alibaba said the “controversial decision” was made because the behaviours of the four “touched the bottom line of integrity”, and caused “unfairness in welfare distribution among employees”.

Wang Shuai, Alibaba’s top PR official said that “the decision is to remind myself and every employee that everything has a bottom line.”

The news soon triggered heated debate online, where many believe the rule-breakers should be punished but firing them is way too harsh.

“This has nothing to do with one’s integrity. It is after all a game inside the company,” Weibo user Manbu said.

SjzAllen said that there is no need to connect the incident with the hackers’ values and moral quality. “Their explanation is very highfalutin and I feel disappointed with the company’s culture and way of administration.”

Some pointed out that Alibaba should try to improve the sales platform instead of punishing the cheaters. “You shouldn’t arrest the people who withdraw more cash from a dysfunctional ATM,” shengheyikan wrote.

A person working in the IT industry for over ten years told thepaper.cn that it is very normal in the mentality of coders to find solutions in computer programs and it is also a manifestation of the geek spirit if the programme is perfectly coded. “For those creative coders, it is fun to find loopholes in their own company’s programs and make a joke about it.”