Not surprisingly, the reporter who gives us the rare, behind-the-scenes look at China is Rob Riggle from The Daily Show:

But to coincide with the Olympics, the show’s Rob Riggle went to China. Really. His skewed travelogue unfolds this week on the Comedy Central hit. That’s when they find out whether they’ve created any international incidents. “It was an opportunity to go over to China and do something that has probably not been done in the past — go to China and do some comedy,” said Riggle, a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan and is still on reserve. Riggle, who last year traveled to Iraq for “Operation Silent Thunder,” started planning by applying in January for journalists’ visa. With the intercession of MTV executives in China, they got the go-ahead less than 24 hours before their plane was due to leave on July 29. “There were days when we got promising news and days when we got not-so-encouraging news,” said Glenn Clements, field producer and Riggles’ traveling partner. “But we decided to stick it out until the end, and it paid off.” Trying to explain what “The Daily Show” did would have been difficult. They essentially delivered a list of places where they planned to do filming. They were able to film segments on the Great Wall of China and within Tiananmen Square, the latter historic site the focus of debates with Chinese authorities over access. “Our motto was `Let’s just go until they tell us to stop,’” Riggle said. Riggle and his crew were followed almost everywhere by Chinese police, although only once was a hand placed over a camera lens cap and they were told to go away. It was a moment the comedy writers probably couldn’t have made up: They were filming the outside of a 7-11 convenience store.