Innovation comes through flogging your equipment against superior machinery. See what broke, what didn't, and to have the racers find out the design flaws quicker than the engineering department ever will.

Thankfully, the Taklimakan Rally is the perfect place for Chinese manufacturers to run with the big dogs - and this year they beat many of them!

For more than 10 days earlier this may, the Taklimakan Desert in Western China was the site of some pretty awesome racing. As far as I could tell, Shineray, Qingqi and XTR were represented here. (Last year, Jialing brought their JH600 bike to test in the rally - now that bike is available in China and many other countries)

If you browse these boards you'll notice some bikes that you've seen before. Supersignet's Shineray 200 (with massive 20 liter tank) and CrazyCarl's Qingqi 200 were well represented by factory backed teams. The star of the Chinese manufacturers was "XTR" with their XTR250F machine.

Let's take a look at some pics!


The Opening Ceremonies


One brave foreigner, Torben, took on all the other Chinese pilots. Entry fees are extremely reasonable when compared to those of the other international rallys.


There's a Chinese bike underneath all the accessories.



Shineray had many bikes there. THis is the one similar to Supersignet's ride. The front red numberplate/light looks pretty good on this bike.


Is this Hyosung 200cc made here in China? I'm not sure but they are readily available here.


The Qingqi 200cc, like CrazyCarl's bike I believe.




All of the above bikes were in the HT5 class. That's 249cc and below.
This is strange though- this Shineray 200cc is grouped in the HT6 class (250-399cc). Maybe they are testing out a new larger displacement engine?


This Shineray has USD forks - hmmm interesting! Perhaps this will be a future model.



XTR250F (actually 230cc displacement) was screaming fast in the HT5 class.
They certainly had a very good rider but this bike also looked very comfortable running with the imported machines. In many stages this XTR beat quite a few of the big displacement KTMs and Yamahas.


Here is the bike that finished SIXTH OVERALL in the final standings - HT508 machine.



BRAVO!!! I hope to get my hands on one of these XTR250Fs someday (oh, by the way, the engine is actually 230cc stock so that's why they run in the small displacement HT5 class)