Abstract: Based on hourly wind observations in combination with the Chinese Tropical Cyclone (TC) Year Book, characteristic distribution and evolution of surface winds associated with 51 landfalling TCs in mainland China in 2008-2014 and the frequency distribution of strong winds during the landing time are analyzed.Differences in wind speed between inland and island stations and the impact of altitude on wind speed are also investigated.Results show that strong winds exceeding the Beaufort scale 6 mainly occur within a radius of 300 km from the TC center when the TC intensity reaches the level of typhoon (TY) or above.Such strong winds are mostly located on the right side of the moving direction of TC, especially in the right front quadrant divided by the center and moving direction of the TC.The distribution of surface winds in southern and/or eastern China is mainly associated with TCs that are classified as type Ⅰ or Ⅱ based on their landing locations.The region of large wind speeds in eastern China mainly includes the coastal region of southwestern Guangdong, the coastal portion of Leizhou Peninsula and western Hainan, while that in southern China mainly includes the Hangzhou Bay and the coastal region of Zhejiang and Fujian.Stations where the wind-force ranges from the Beaufort scale 6 to 7 are mainly located around the Hangzhou Bay.Stations where wind-force could exceed the Beaufort scale 8 are more densely distributed in the Hangzhou Bay and coastal area of Fujian than in the coastal region of southwestern Guangdong.Strong winds may occur before or after TC landfall, and the time of occurrence is highly related with the distance between the observational station and TC center.For TCs with the same intensity, the wind speed is lager at island stations than that at inland stations, and stronger at high altitude stations than at low altitude stations.The conclusions of this study have valuable implications for surface wind forecast of TC.