Dujuan had earlier battered Taiwan, leaving two people feared dead and a trail of destruction in its wake.

As Dujuan approached, Hong Kong's weather observatory briefly issued a number nine storm warning -- the highest on its scale -- but later downgraded the typhoon to eight as it appeared to shift towards the north of the territory.

"The typhoon brushed past Hong Kong, directly hitting neighbouring Shenzhen," an observatory spokesman said, adding that Dujuan was moving northwest across the Pearl River Delta.

Typhoon Dujuan arrived at Gangkou town, Huidong county, in Guangdong province, around 7:50 pm, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

The Guangdong Provincial Meteorological Observatory said the maximum wind force was monitored at 144 kilometres (89 miles) per hour, Xinhua reported.

By early Wednesday the Hong Kong observatory had downgraded Dujan's status to a severe tropical storm which it said would weak gradually as it moved across western Guangdong.

On Tuesday, the typhoon had forced the closure of schools, shops, businesses and financial markets in Hong Kong as authorities sounded the alert.

As large waves crashed onto shorelines, officials said there had been 22 unspecified typhoon-related casualties, while strong winds felled at least 85 trees. There were also reports of power outages, floods and landslides.

At Hong Kong's international airport, the typhoon caused the cancellation of 151 flights while 115 had been delayed late Tuesday, the Airport Authority said.

Authorities urged people to go home when the signal eight was first raised in the afternoon, sending thousands of people streaming out of offices to catch last-minute ferries or buses before public transport was suspended.

Throngs of schoolchildren packed fast food restaurants and huddled under umbrellas at bus stops as they waited to get home while workers hastily took down advertising signs and lashed down bamboo scaffolding.

But by nightfall the rain-lashed city was deserted, with shops fastened shut, ferries suspended and only limited bus and rail services in operation.

The government said it had opened 27 temporary shelters, to which more than 120 people had been admitted by early evening.

A Hong Kong Observatory spokesman said the typhoon was unusual in that it appeared to have two eyes, one about 20 kilometres in diameter and the other 100 kilometres.

Hong Kong regularly suffers torrential rain and flooding from typhoons that pass by the territory each year, although direct hits are rare.

The most devastating in Hong Kong's recorded history was the Great Typhoon of September 1937, which sank thousands of junks and cargo boats and killed more than 10,000 people.

One of the worst in recent history was Typhoon Wanda in 1962, which claimed more than 130 lives, left dozens more missing and wrecked around 1,000 boats and ships.

Typhoon Dajuan brushed southern Taiwan overnight leaving more than 500,000 homes without electricity at one point and severely interrupting road, rail and air links.

One man drowned off the island of Penghu, while another person was missing after being washed away by flood waters in mountainous Taitung county.

The one fatality was identified as 54-year-old Lin Tze-rong, while the missing person was named as 23-year-old student Yen Min-ju, who was swept away by flood water in a mountainous eastern Taitung County.

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