Howdy Slenderman.

I own a X2X with a Hu C plate. I commute with it to work at the heart of Shanghai deep inside the inner ring around Jingansi 静安寺. With at most 200 rmb penalty a pop, I can afford a lot of tickets with the cost differential between Hu A and Hu C (just did the math: 625 tickets for the life of the plate). Since it is a Shanghai plate, there is no danger of getting confiscated like those out of city plates. As far as the appreciation of the plate goes, recently my Hu C just tripled in value, more than Hu A in multiples. So far I have over 6K on the clock and not once stopped by the traffic cop yet.

Enough of this poor man's justification for a Hu C.

I have been having great fun with my X2X. It is narrow, similar in width to a bicycle, with those side reflectors way high above the side mirror of most passenger cars, I can pass through just anything in downtown Shanghai. It is so much nimbler and easier in handling than my other bike JH600. However, this fun comes at a cost. It is definitely not the most comfortable bike, especially for longer trip. The longest trip I did so far is a 1200 km trip to Anhui last October. The last 400 km was just brutal. All of us X2X riders are pretty much standing on the bike to avoid any contact of our sore butt against the hard narrow seat. So far no one seems to know how to alleviate this pain in the ass on the X2X.

As far as the quality goes, keep an eye on all the screws, nuts and bolts and make sure they stay on for the first couple of weeks, during which I had many parts falling off from it. However, nothing Loctite can't fix. I did have the benefits of my friend Master Eric's mechanical skill to fall back on, who personally baptized the whole bike with Loctite for me. After that "reassembling" break-in, it seems to run fine now. Also, I first bought the more expensive model with a set of "drifting tires" and smaller rear sprocket. I'd suggest strongly not to adopt that type of tires, which are simply too drifty for me and performing extremely poor in rain. I replaced the whole tire set, sprocket and chain in 2 weeks.

Welcome back to the biker scene. China is an incredible place to explore on motorcycle. You will have lots of fun.