Venturing into unreported China

China has pledged more freedoms for reporters ahead of next year's Olympics, but when the BBC's Dan Griffiths travelled to the countryside to investigate reports of unrest he was detained and questioned.

China wants to keep reports of rural unrest under wraps

The village of Shengyou is a three hour drive south of Beijing, deep in the countryside surrounded by fields of maize.

A traditional landscape found across this vast nation - but everything is not as it seems.

My taxi driver tells me that the police have set up checkpoints round the village. He refuses to go any further - so I go the rest of the way on foot.

I walk down a narrow lane with broad poplar trees on either side. A small tractor chugs by, the driver stares at me - foreigners are rarely seen around here.

Round a bend in the road, I see two white vans. Several policemen are standing beside them. They look as out of place in rural China as I do.

The questions come thick and fast. What am I doing? Where have I come from? Who is my contact in the village?

Over the course of the next few hours they will ask me this last question again and again. From nowhere a black car pulls up and I am ushered inside. Read more