This paper presents the major lessons learnt from the recently occurred devastating earthquake of May 12, 2008 in the Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province. It discussed some bottle-neck questions existing in the current earthquake disaster prevention work of the China, such as low quality construction in both rural and town area, seismic hazard assessment and seismic zoning, earthquake induced geological hazard, and earthquake prediction etc., and pointed out that the civil engineering prevention method is the best choice for the solution of reducing earthquake losses and mitigating earthquake disasters.