Ever since he was a child, playing with wooden building bricks, Xiao Wei has wanted to be a construction engineer.

Now, after the widespread devastation caused by last week's massive earthquake, measuring 7.8 per cent on the Richter scale, the lanky 16-year-old is even more set on the idea.

"I hope that if all these towns and villages are rebuilt after the earthquake, they can be planned in a different way - with more open spaces and not such tall buildings," he says as he sits with his extended family in their portion of a tent shelter that stretches along the side of a broad highway.

Xiao Wei and his parents' apartment was not completely destroyed but has been declared unsafe to live in. That's more fortunate than most of the people here, including his aunt Yang Yunju.

She is visiting the medical tent across the road, set up by a team of doctors from the local Red Cross in the neighbouring province of Hunan. The 30-person team is one of a number of Red Cross units who rushed in from other areas of China to help. They are attending to a serious cut on the arm of her young daughter, Wang Fangjia.

Yang Yunju fights back tears as she talks about the loss of her home and the almost total destruction of her village.

But aside from the cries and understandable tantrums of exhausted children , the atmosphere among these families seems subdued but calm. Xiao Wei's eyes also reflect an enormous sense of loss.

"I feel sad about my home town and that so many people have died," he explains.

He's been lucky compared to the many thousands of school children buried beneath collapsed school buildings throughout the disaster zone. His school, located in the downtown area of the small city of Shifang, is a modern and solid looking architectural creation.

Even so, all but 30 of the students - mostly those studying for China's notoriously competitive gao kao, the university entrance exam - have left. Those that remain are studying in the eerily quiet classrooms, or outside in the gardens, and living in tents in one of the playgrounds. It is not easy for them to concentrate

"Our hearts feel very troubled by all the tragedy which has been happening to people around us," says one thin young male student with cropped hair while pointing to his chest.

Education authorities are still in the process of deciding whether or not to postpone the exams, scheduled for next month.

To do so would give more time to these youngsters, who have lived through so much in the space of one week. But it might also put off something else which they sorely need - a return to some sort of normality in their lives.