Documentary encourages Chinese tycoons to open up

Journalists usually find it hard to make a tycoon open his heart in front of a camera.

But in the Tencent News documentary series Insights, an amateur "journalist" manages to get eight entrepreneurs from a wide range of fields to open up, with each featured in one episode.

With Yu Minhong, founder of New Oriental Education & Technology, serving as the host and "journalist", the documentary, which recently released the finale on the streaming site Tencent Video, has drawn 1.5 billion views online and been ranked on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo's most searched topics list for 48 times.

From Li Ning, the Olympic gymnast-turned sportswear titan, to Wang Zhongjun, co-founder of Huayi Brothers Media, known for producing blockbusters such as The Eight Hundred, the documentary reveals some of these entrepreneurs' biggest problems about their businesses.

For instances, Wang tells Yu in the documentary how the company has started the decades-long cooperation with Feng Xiaogang -- one of China's most commercially successful directors -- since the 1999 comedy hit Sorry Baby.

In another standalone episode, real estate tycoon Feng Lun recalls that his history teacher in the middle school has enlightened him to strive for an ambitious goal.

The documentary has earned 8.7 points out of 10 on the popular review site Douban, with some critics regarding it as a creative show to help audience take a glimpse of China's business and startup history in recent decades.