A total solar eclipse was viewed at 9:15 AM in many places along the upper stream of China's longest river of the Yangtze.

The moon shadow fully blocked the sun, and gazers could clearly enjoy the aura of solar corona in observation sites in west China's Chongqing Municipality and Guang'an City in neighboring Sichuan Province.

The cities turned off many landscape light for the convenience of the full solar eclipse, which lasted about four minutes.

Gazers also thronged to the banks of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers Wednesday morning in northwestern Lanzhou and central Wuhan cities as the moon started to shadow the sun at 8:15 AM.

Partial solar eclipse started at 8:01'27 AM in Cona County, Tibet in southwest China, according to an observatory under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The county was one of the first places in the country to view the solar eclipse.

However, the solar view from Cona was blocked by overcast, according to sources from the CAS Purple Mountain Observatory based in Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu Province.

Cona is 500 km south of Lhasa, Tibet's capital. The sun sunshine was blocked behind clouds in Lhasa as well on Wednesday.

Weather in many Chinese cities along the full solar eclipse path along the Yangtze River is not favorable for the observation, according to the China Meteorological Administration's forecast at 8:00 AM.

(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2009)