Commercial shops were largely shuttered while bulldozers and backhoes rumbled at sites across the city. Blue fences surrounded flattened lots where the worst-hit buildings had been demolished.

But their first stop was high above the city at the badly damaged Two Kings Temple, a 1,500-year-old Taoist sanctuary set in the hills overlooking a river. A dozen workers in hard hats were busy sifting through debris with bare hands to salvage bricks to be used in reconstructing the historic site.

The tour, organized by government officials, included a 10-minute stop at the site of a three-story gym that had dramatically pancaked in one corner, before the experts were herded back on the bus. The brief visit reflected the sensitivity that remains over accusations that poor construction of buildings, particularly at schools, had contributed to the huge loss of life.

The half-day trip showcased only a fraction of the quake's power, said Steven French, an urban planner from the Georgia Institute of Technology who creates computer models that assess damage by earthquakes.

"We saw a pretty small slice of damage today," he said. "I'd rather we'd gotten closer to the epicenter. I'd like to have seen what happened in the rural areas. I wanted to see how the landslides affected the areas."

Still, French added that the trip was a rare chance to see a disaster zone, given China's historic reluctance to open up to outside assistance.

The day ended with a forum led by Chengdu's Vice Mayor Liu Pu, who told his guests he hoped to "learn a lot of international best practices on reconstruction."

Government leaders said an initial recovery plan, to be finalized next month, calls for the bulk of rebuilding to be completed within three years, and a more complete renovation to be done within five years.

Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, encouraged his hosts to have a vision but remain flexible. He urged them to communicate their plans honestly with quake victims. And he suggested that the tragedy of the quake ultimately could be turned into the chance to rebuild a better city.

"This does present you with an opportunity. If all you do is reconstruct what was there before, you only turn back the clock. You need to do more. What kind of city do you want this to be in the future?" he said.

In the end, local leaders will need to grapple with how to combine speed with careful deliberation, said Olshansky, who has studied post-disaster recovery in the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"This is only two months after the quake. It's an extremely confusing time and there's a lot of uncertainty," he said. "I think the main thing we can do is give reassurance. It's nice for them to know that it was the same for everyone else."