More specifically, if/how well does the Baidu search crawler index -
I've looked through their documentation and webmaster tools but can't find a 'View as Baidu bot' tool (like Google & Bing have) that shows a preview of how your site is indexed?
No, unfortunately.
Here is a Badui SEO Guide
Page 9
Use text instead of flash, images, Javascript, etc. to display important content...