If I were going to China for an extended period, I would install one of the VMWare supervisors on the bare metal laptop and install both Windows and at least one version of Linux to run in virtual machines. I would create backup images of the installed systems on the hard drive and I would also bring along an external drive containing additional backups. This should allow me to recover from almost any failure except the loss of both the laptop AND the external hard drive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would only install Linux, and have a Windows 7 option to install as a virtual machine with Linux as the Host. However, I'd only entertain Win7 at all if I needed to use QQ, which as you know would normally only be available on Linux if you used as web-based QQ-and that is none too good. I would take a couple of flash drives in case I needed to reinstall Linux.

The last thing you want to do in China is to bury yourself away with all the fodder for the moronic masses like ,twitter, facebook- you should be out there away from your desktop kissing and cuddling the Chinese girls, climbing mountains and learning Mandarin. If you need to send a picture home, attach it to your e-mail. Don't prepare you computer as if that is all you will do in your spare time. You might need a virtual Win7 for QQ to arrange dates with Chinese women.