[Roccus]

Unreinforced brick buildings do not fare well in earthquakes. From the look of those pictures, that's what they were

[rawhide]

One report I read said that some local government buildings had withstood the quake, because they were built to the correct standards using metal reinforcement. It is a murderous shame the schools were not.

[old-and-old]

can you elaborate, what do you mean unreinforced?

[IM2MAD]

FWIW, I found this image of fault lines in China. Unfortunately it’s sideways and I don’t know how to rotate it. There also some dates of, apparently, when some earthquakes took place.

http://serc.carleton.edu/images/eet/workshops/discussions/china_map.jpg