Thanks for the advice. The GS is indeed an unwieldy creature for China, especially when loaded with a dog. I've now put about 10km on her in China, including two major jaunts: 1) from Kashgar to Urumqi via the Kyrgyz border-regions and the Yili Valley in 2007; and 2) a loop from Lanzhou down to Yushu in southern Qinghai and then over the back roads of Qinghai to Xinjiang in 2009. On both trips I found myself dreaming of the 200cc Qingqi motorbikes that I have garaged in Lanzhou. Having done trips with both domestic dirt bikes and foreign imports, I have to agree with other posters that the former is in most cases the better option. Still, for all the crashes and drops, the monster has been absolutely reliable, which I can't say for the Chinese bikes. And when the highway opens up in the straight-shot expanses of Xinjiang or Tibet, it is pretty sweet to drop the thing into the sixth gear. For this upcoming trip I just threw on a pair of proper stubby off-road tires, unlike the 70%-30% combos I've used in the past. So I'm hoping that this will make weaving around the coal trucks in the dirt a bit less risky.