Dear TB-Racing,

It's actually quite interesting that Jialing supplied a sticker with their brand in Chinese. Mine had only pinyin branding, so when I registered my bike -- the first JH600 two-wheeler in Shanghai -- the registration authorities actually took a stencil and spray-painted the 嘉陵 brand on my bike. "The rules say the bike MUST display the brand in Chinese to be legally registered." Shanghai being an eminently reasonable place, however, the guy who sprayed the white "paint" through the stencil told me, "It washes right off." And so it did.

The fact that Jialing supplied actual stickers suggests an awareness of this regulation.

At my two-year re-registration last June, there was not a peep about the lack of a Chinese brand, or the presence of an aftermarket muffler, or the presence of Tourfella racks and non-standard rear top rack and Taobao-sourced handguards. These did NOT conform with the picture in my registration booklet, nor did they conform with the image of my bike that, like yours in Huzhou, was immortalized in the Shanghai motorcycle registry as the first official sample of the species in Shanghai.

That said, it's stupid as hell that China forbids customization of motor vehicles.

cheers!