Fake in China

So everyone knows you can buy fake purses and watches in China but the level of fakeness does not stop there. Whenever I buy napkins in a store, I should carefully check to see if the Chinese brand is the real napkin brand or a knockoff of the Chinese napkin brand. If I get the knock off by accident, which looks exactly the same on the package except the color is more faded, then the napkins won't be scented (even though the package claims they are) and they will break apart very easily. There are apparently even fake Ferraris.

Generally whenever you buy anything in China, you should assume it will be "fake". The question is not whether it's fake but how fake it is. There is a whole culture of buying things that you definitely know are fake, it's known as "shanzhai" in Chinese. If you want to save money (and generally everyone does) you will simply move down the ladder fakeness. For example, if you buy a Louis Vuitton purse on the street and you pay 20 Yuan (~$3) for it, then the quality will be very shoddy and it will look terrible. Instead, you could choose to buy the purses that are advertised as having been stolen from container ships coming in from Taiwan, which may very well be "real". You could also find the higher quality knock offs which are found in nicer looking stores or the purses that are really close to being "real" since they are made at the same factories where they make the purses for export to the U.S., except that the purses are made at night and are shipped out the back door of the factory, though unfortunately often bypassing the quality control department.
You can't just look at the price either. There are stores that say Gianni Versace on the door and look very nice and professional inside and they will sell shirts for over 1000 Yuan (~$150) a piece that really appear to be the real thing except they usually fall into pieces after the first wash. It may also be helpful to find out that Versace does not have any authorized stores in China.

In regards to DVDs, you can buy real DVDs at places like Walmart but that's silly since there are plenty of vendors selling copies. They have the new compilation DVDs where they can fit 8-12 movies on one DVD and sell that to you for 5 Yuan (80 cents). Because of the problem of determining which DVD copy will be of a good quality, some companies have emerged, the best being DVD9, DVD19 and HBO. My favorite is HBO, they use the same logo as the movie channel but have absolutely no affiliation. Instead, this HBO merely makes good quality copies of DVDs. The problem happens when other companies fake the fake HBO label and sell you shoddy quality movies.