“It’s not often that Fate allows a person to change paths!” Just before the commencement of the third annual Chinese Documentary Forum in late September in Taipei, Ben Tsiang reflected upon the remarkable turn his life had taken in the past seven years.

In 2004, he left his post as general manager of Sina Mobile at Sina Corp. “When I started the job Sina Mobile only accounted for 5% of the total revenue; by the time I left, that figure had grown to 60%,” he recalls.

When Sina Corp entered the mainland Chinese market in 2002, the mainland was in the midst of an Internet explosion. Tsiang was heavily burdened with his responsibilities relating to cell-phone texting and ringback tones. He scrambled about from dusk to dawn every day. He traveled around China meeting with one client after another. It seemed like his suitcase was always packed and ready to go.

And then from nowhere came a heart attack at age 35. The people close to him were shocked that such a thing could befall him, but he was glad in a way, because the ensuing operation gave him a much needed two-month rest.

Tsiang oversaw the production of 1428, a documentary detailing the aftermath of the cataclysmic earthquake in Sichuan. The film won the award for best documentary at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.

Were there any regrets about leaving Sina?

“Sina was like my first child. But there can be no gain without loss. I was excited about leaving, as well, since it was a chance to reinvent my future. Then there was the thrill of the unknown,” he says.

Entrepreneurship seems to run deep in the blood for this bilingual talent born in the US but raised in Taiwan. His academic career was a smooth arc that took him from Jian­guo High School to National Taiwan University’s Mechanical Engineering Department. While attending Stanford as a graduate student in 1995, he and some older classmates founded Sina­net.

He had already received his acceptance letter from the Harvard School of Architecture when a Silicon Valley venture capitalist offered to invest US$30,000 in his company and also to bring professional management on board. He and his friends had always been enthralled by the prospect of starting their own company. They had caught a glimpse of the Web’s vast potential to transform the global economy, and so they bid an unsentimental farewell to the ivory tower in order to found what later came to be known as Sina Corp.

In 2000 Sina Corp. became listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market, and within two months the share price had rocketed to US$58. This was the zenith of the dot-com bubble, however, and when it burst, the young entrepreneurs watched in horror as their company’s stock price plummeted to a meager US$1.

The following two years were more arduous than anything he had experienced. He was eager to effect a merger between Sina and the Taiwanese web portal Kimo, but when Yahoo pre-empted them, they shifted their focus to mainland China with the goal of becoming that nation’s favored web portal. ­Tsiang relocated from Tai­pei to Bei­jing, where he spent the next two years hustling to make his company profitable. Eventually, the stock price returned to the US$30–40 range.

But the end of that grueling, exhilarating ride also marked the end of a chapter of his life.

Even before the age of 35, ­Tsiang had achieved the kind of business success well beyond the grasp of the envious masses. Yet there was something about him that was atypical of an engineer.

When he was in college, he actually spent the majority of his time in recreational fine-arts groups. He was at NTU a total of five years during the 1980s, a time when it was quite unusual for any student to spend more than the customary four, but he figured it was better to delay graduation than forgo all of the philosophy, psychology, and sociology classes for which his interest was keenest.

When he was reconsidering his career options in 2005, cross-strait relations had reached a crucial juncture.

Taiwanese politics had become especially fractious in the wake of an assassination attempt in the time leading up to a presidential election. Over on the mainland, stock prices and real-estate prices were soaring, and a new culture of materialism was taking hold amongst the younger generation. Tsiang and his good friend, seasoned documentary maker Chang Chao­wei, wanted to preserve images of the tempestuous era for posterity, and thus CNEX was born.

The title CNEX was chosen because it suggested the notion of preserving history for future generations. Going into 2009, they had already logged numerous triumphs, such as mainland director Du Hai­bin’s 1428, which won an Orrizonti Award for best documentary at the Venice Film Festival.

KJ: Music and Life, the story of a haughty 11-year-old piano whiz and his questioning of the purpose of music-making even as his prodigious talent takes him to London and the Czech Republic to take part in competitions and recordings, was such a hit in Hong Kong that it played for six months straight, earning HK$1 million in box-office sales and marking a new high point for documentary in that region. The film also went on to garner Best Documentary at the Golden Horse Awards and Best Picture at the Taipei Film Festival. Moreover, with a budget of only HK$250,000, it seemed that ­Tsiang and company had achieved a neat balance of commerce and art.

Documentary film still isn’t anything remotely resembling an investor’s paradise. Tsiang devotes the majority of his time to fundraising. Estimates show that in the past three years, CNEX’s operating budget relied 80% on sponsorship with only the remaining 20% coming from cinema releases both at home and abroad. Of the sponsors, Taiwanese IT industry heavyweights were the most generous. It does look, however, as though the film sales themselves may account for 40% of the operating budget this year.

“The motivation for making documentary tends to be pretty pure—after all, you’re not likely to get rich and famous doing it. It’s crazy, perhaps, but it’s beautiful, too,” he says.

Tsiang’s obsession and idealism span the vast spectrum of the Chinese world, from Taiwan, to the mainland, to Hong Kong, and across the oceans to the farthest drops of the Chinese diaspora. For this reason, CNEX has offices in Tai­pei, Bei­jing, and Hong Kong where they can deepen the pool of talented directors, refine their product line, and launch forays into international festivals so as to increase their marketing power. It is a hungry apparatus fueled by continual infusions of capital from Tsiang’s own pockets.

“The first few years the weight of the whole thing was on my shoulders, but eventually the support began to come in, which reduced my individual burden. Now, that I consider to be a benchmark of our success—if this thing can move forward with less direct investment from me personally, that indicates healthy growth.”

His love of documentary takes him to anywhere between 20 and 30 film festivals annually. But there is a concrete purpose to these visits as well. Many international filmmakers and producers regard Chinese subject matter with keen interest, but are dissuaded from collaborating with Chinese directors by cultural and linguistic obstacles. ­Tsiang’s mission is to harness international resources to Chinese creativity, to help Chinese directors break into the system, and to make sure they have the support of the international filmic apparatus even before they shoot the first scene. Tai­pei is the base of his operations, and for reasons that he doesn’t attempt to disguise. The international community naturally holds greater interest for the narratives of a vast country of 1.3 billion than for a small country of 23 million. By holding the pitching forum in Tai­pei, foreign visitors have the chance to experience Taiwan’s unique cultural gifts.

“I may be an engineer by training, but I’ve always been fascinated by social issues. Documentary for me is a chance to pursue an ongoing education, to see the evolution of Chinese society unfold from numerous different perspectives,” he explains.

“What CNEX does by recording images of the era can be likened to a relay race—all I’ve done is run the first leg, but others will take up the baton in time.” By training his lens on the depth and breadth of Chinese society he has found his station in life, and been given visions of what the future offers.