I just bought a Oneplus One in Beijing from Canada (had someone bring it over). The only barrier would be your proficiency in reading Chinese as well as having an Alipay Account (Chinese Paypal).

Every Tuesday and Friday 10AM China time, go to oneplus.cn and you can order one online. I requested mine to ship to an address in Beijing, and it was shipped from Shenzhen. Total time since I clicked pay was 36 hours until it arrived at the address in Beijing (free shipping).

As to the differences in version, the Chinese version has Color OS (no Google apps) on it as default and it took all of 3 minutes to flash it to Cyanogenmod. Also be aware of what frequencies your carrier uses, as I am using Rogers in Canada, the Oneplus One Chinese version works on both 3G and 4G with Rogers. For a full list of frequencies and differences in the two versions you can check out this link: http://www.gizchina.com/2014/06/14/w...north-america/

Also of note, the Chinese version costs a little more on paper at 2299.99RMB, but there is no sales tax or delivery on top of the price. In the US it is advertised as $350 USD which is 2172RMB. But the US version has a shipping fee of $16-$19 USD totaling $369 USD which is 2290RMB. Therefore the price is essentially the same for Chinese or US versions if you can have someone bring it over for free or your going to be in China.

All in all, if you can read Chinese, have an Alipay account with 2299.99 RMB in it and will be in China for more than a day or two then definitely buy it from the source instead of from resellers.