To Kevin’s excellent advice I would add this: when in China, in my experience, keeping a VERY low profile while shooting video is to avoid a great deal of trouble. Tourists with small cameras, in tourist settings, go pretty largely unnoticed. Bring out a big camera, or a camera and tripod, and police or security-types may challenge you. A stabilizer would almost certainly be asking for trouble in many places I visited.
The problem is that you don’t know what’s o.k. to shoot and what isn’t. I was chased away by two armed security guards while I was filming a market place because I was only a block away from the American Embassy, which was in the background of my shot.
I recommend traveling light and as inconspicuously as possible. If you take Kevin’s advice and get a monopod, take a look at the Manfrotto monopod that has a squeeze handle for adjusting height. It’s a much better solution than leg locks that have to be adjusted manually.
