It has been 17 years since I was shopping for audio gear in China--and I was not in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, either--so things have almost certainly changed. At that time, the situation was pretty bleak. I ended up with the absolute cheapest 5 channel AVR Yamaha made, as it was literally the best thing I could find without spending a lot more money than I had budgeted. (I think they also sold the highest Yamaha in the line, but nothing in between).
Speakers were really frustrating, as there were a lot of really nice looking Chinese speakers at cheap prices, with wooden cabinets that alone would have cost hundreds of dollars or more in America. However, the sound was awful. (Yes, I considered DIY, but I was in the process of building a department from scratch and working 60 hour weeks, so it was not appealing.) There was also one high end store that sold B&W and Maggies along with the Chinese junk. After spending all weekend looking for 3 weeks in a row, I came across the Swans, and was thrilled when they actually sounded good! At the time, they really played up the Canadian designer angle--there was a life size poster of him on their front door. They were selling a 5-channel (no sub) package with a God-awful Chinese integrated amp that, like most, looked the part but weighed all of maybe 2 kilos and had high distortion and no power. They would not sell only the two floor standers or even the 5 speakers alone and I flat refused to buy the amp. We finally compromised and they worked out a deal with another dealer in the same mall to bring the Yamaha up and let me listen to the combo, at which point any reservations I still had about the speakers vanished. I negotiated with the speaker dealer, they negotiated with the Yamah dealer, and I finally had a system! I had to go to the other shop to get the box and remote for the receiver (the speakers were delivered), and once there I determined that the speaker dealer had only deducted something like $80 for the amp. I don't think it was even worth that. If I remember correctly, I paid the equivalent of about $800 for the speakers and $220 for the receiver. A few years later I noticed the exact same set of speakers selling online in the USA for $3,000.
