Tianya is the GitHub for liberal arts students.
On Children's Day in 2026, Tianya Community, an intangible cultural heritage of the Chinese Internet, was resurrected.
This resurrection was not sudden. In the three years since its shutdown, Tianya struggled to make a comeback every year.
Due to owing tens of millions of yuan in server fees to Hainan Telecom for more than a decade, Tianya was shut down in early 2023.
A few months later, Song Zheng, the former executive editor - in - chief who was no longer an official employee, voluntarily led a team to hold a charity sale in the live - streaming room, hoping to crowdfund 3 million yuan to keep Tianya alive. Unfortunately, they overestimated users' affection for Tianya and only raised 200,000 yuan.
Later, data showed that 70% of the viewers in the live - streaming room were men in their forties, and less than half of them placed orders [1].
In 2024, Tianya applied for bankruptcy but quickly changed to a new operating entity and asked to be reborn. This time, it tried to introduce strategic investors, advertising, and e - commerce, but it came to nothing.
In 2025, Tianya sent out signals of being ready to go. It quietly completed the construction of infrastructure such as technical restoration, data migration, and system upgrade.
After everything was ready, at the beginning of this year, Tianya announced that it would return like lightning on Children's Day and simultaneously launched a "New Tianya Founding Member Product Service Package" worth 1,999 yuan, with a limited quantity of 9,999 copies.
Membership entitles you to the honorary title of "Tianya Restarter", be permanently engraved as a founding member of the new Tianya, and enjoy the future governance privileges and rewards of the new Tianya.
Currently, no one has revealed the scale of the founding organization. The only information leaked by internal employees is: The first founding member is a post - 2000s person.
The implication is that there's no need to confine Tianya to the memories of middle - aged people. Maybe with more efforts, it is still needed in the new era.
Everyone Misses It
As we all know, the environment has reached a point where it's getting harder and harder to run a content community.
Early platforms like Mop, Renren.com, and Rongshuxia have ceased to exist. The surviving platforms like Douban, Hupu, and Baidu Tieba will never achieve great success. Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, the most promising ones in the village, are still in the stage of commercial exploration.
Tianya has been actively trying to save itself in the "ICU" for three years and is now determined to ask for another five hundred years. It's not that it's out of touch; it's just that its past was too glorious.
In 2003, when there were only 79.5 million Chinese Internet users, Tianya already had 3 million registered users. After Google invested in Tianya, it reached its peak with over 130 million registered users and over 250 million monthly active users, labeled as "the largest Chinese community in the world".
Even during the three years of its physical shutdown, Tianya remained an inexhaustible treasure trove of the Chinese Internet.
The supernatural novel "Ghost Blows Out the Light" serialized in the "Lotus Ghost Stories" section has now become an IP empire of its own. It has been adapted into 17 film and television works in five years. Another post, "My Years as a Taoist Priest" in the same section, was posted 14 years ago, and there will be a short - drama version on Hongguo this year.
"A Brief History of the Ming Dynasty" in the "Discussing History over Wine" section was published in 2006 and became one of the best - selling historical readings in China. The author made it onto the Chinese Writers' Rich List for seven consecutive years. The audiobook version has become a source of traffic on Himalaya, with over 1.4 billion plays.
Posts like "The Ultimate Prediction of a Real - Estate Speculator", "A Decade of Purity", and "It's Harder for the Poor to Produce Elites" are still relevant today. The compiled PDF versions are circulated on Xianyu, and the directly reposted content also attracts a lot of traffic. There is often a mysterious comment below:
It's too late when you understand.
In addition, events such as the South China Tiger fraud, the Shanxi brick - kiln incident, the Edison Chen photo scandal, and the Han Han ghost - writing controversy, which are recorded in the history of Internet public opinion, all fermented here.
There are so many elements that when Tianya Community was shut down in 2023, besides the official statement of failing to redeem the servers, there was a well - known conspiracy theory in the public: Too many secrets were leaked here.
The community was so charming that Ning Caishen also left a famous post, "This Lousy Place Called Tianya". The core idea was to complain that Tianya was too wonderful and he had wasted almost all his spare time on it.
Finally, he expressed his love for Tianya with the words, "In order to return to a normal life as soon as possible, I hope Tianya will quickly become cold - hearted and incomprehensible. That will be my only chance to get rid of the temptation of the Internet. I sincerely look forward to that day!"
On the day when Tianya was finally resurrected, the first - generation netizens recalled the glorious old days, and the new - generation netizens came to see how well the older generation had it.
Tianya's statement was: "Tianya's return is by no means a simple revival but an evolution towards the new era."
To put it bluntly, Tianya believes that its unique human - created content data resources will shine in the AI era.
But does the new era really need the new Tianya?
The Soil for God - like Posts
Tianya and its god - like posts were born in a special period with many limiting conditions.
In 1999 when Tianya was founded, there were only 750,000 Internet - connected computers in China, and 2.1 million people learned to dial - up to the Internet [2]. The entry threshold itself was a hard barrier.
An article in "Computer Business News" at that time set the price range of low - end PCs within 20,000 yuan, while the average monthly salary of urban employees was less than 1,000 yuan.
On the other hand, the Internet was a new thing at that time. Netizens didn't know how to use it, and relevant departments didn't know how to manage it.
Later, netizens found out that the real identities of Tianya's great masters were almost all top figures in their respective fields, such as university scholars, government officials, and stock market traders.
It was because the Internet infrastructure was underdeveloped at that time, so they could only contribute out of love. Otherwise, the stock - trading masters would have opened knowledge planets and sold their blessed Flush installation packages on Xianyu.
There was a lack of public expression channels in the real world, and Tianya provided an outlet for free expression. They couldn't wait to type long articles of tens of thousands of words and freely share their surplus knowledge here.
Tianya used the ancient post - topping mechanism. The traffic relied entirely on word - of - mouth. As long as there were continuous replies, the content could occupy the core exposure position on the website for months. This classical mechanism has an advantage: High - quality content from many years ago can be displayed for a long time.
Among the current mainstream Internet platforms, only YouTube can achieve this, except for some specific types of websites.
For example, Li Ziqi has stopped posting for many years, but her videos on YouTube can still get continuous advertising revenue. According to a third - party channel value assessment website, Li Ziqi can still get 785,000 yuan in advertising revenue every month during her hiatus.
YouTube's algorithm can keep old content exposed for years. However, the algorithm logic of almost all content platforms encourages creators to improve efficiency and continuously create new content, resulting in the rapid digestion of "god - like posts".
All users are immersed in the personalized recommendation context. They swipe past a hot post in 15 seconds, and god - like posts that are read word - for - word across the whole network have become a rare species.
In other words, the soil that could support Tianya's god - like posts has disappeared.
It's Better to Miss It Forever
Going back to the simplest beginning of the story, Tianya was shut down because of debt. In the ultimatum issued by Hainan Telecom, it required Tianya to pay back 3 million yuan first, but Tianya really couldn't afford it.
Like many of its peers who are sitting on a gold mine but struggling, talking about money hurts feelings, but if you don't talk about money, even the network cable will be unplugged.
In its early days, Tianya was too proud to accept financing and was supported by the stock - trading skills of its boss, Xing Ming [2].
Later, it never had a mature commercial layout. It sold advertising space sporadically, which didn't amount to much and was easily criticized.
Later, it realized the value of IP but couldn't make good use of it because of the lack of commercial infrastructure, and ended up making a wedding dress for more professional online - literature platforms.
In the era of mobile Internet, it started to act recklessly. It dabbled in tourism, e - commerce, and blockchain. As a result, it didn't make money, and users left. Its monthly active users dropped from nearly 3 million in 2016 to only hundreds of thousands after 2020 [3].
At that time, Huang Zheng's evaluation of Tianya was deeply agreed by Xing Ming himself: The current Tianya is no longer the same as it used to be, and the current Zhihu is a bit like the former Tianya [4].
Now, a more realistic problem for Tianya is that although the new Tianya has cleverly avoided the 139 million yuan in accumulated enforcement debts of the old Tianya through a new operating entity, it can't build a financial foundation out of thin air even if it can escape legally.
In the live - streaming a few years ago, Xing Ming was still confident about Tianya's resurrection: "200 million yuan can bring Tianya back to the forefront of the Internet [4]."
But this goal obviously can't be achieved by the "New Tianya Founding Members". At present, the only things that seem to have some hope are selling its assets and betting on AI language materials.
When thinking about how Tianya can adapt to the new era, it's also necessary to worry about how to avoid a disgraceful end.
Epilogue
When trying to "restart Tianya" for the first time in 2023, Song Zheng, who had no stake in the matter, put forward an idea:
Tianya could become a static Internet memory museum, without the need for new users and new interactions, to commemorate the stories of the first - generation Chinese Internet users [1].
This is actually the best destination for Tianya.
Just like how game players still miss "Chinese Paladin" and "Heroes of Might and Magic 3", if these games were brought to 2026 in their original form, how many people would still play them?
The era of the classical Internet represented by Tianya Community, like every piece of material that has become a Chinese dream - core, carries people's rosy memories of the prosperous millennium.
Just like how Zhuge Liang died at Wuzhangyuan and the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453, these stories ended at the right time, leaving almost infinite room for imagination for future generations about those wonderful possibilities.
Many stories are worth remembering, thinking about, and hypothesizing, but not worth continuing.
References
[1] We Scattered at "Tianya", Renwu Magazine
[2] Who Can Save Tianya? China Newsweek
[3] Tianya Community Crashed on the First Day of Its Return Due to Excessive Traffic. Former Executive Editor - in - Chief: The Inaccessibility of the Website Is Also a Kind of Successful Restart, Jimu News
[4] Interview with the Founder of Tianya: The Worst - Case Scenario Is "Let It Become a Tear of the Times", Meiri Renwu
This article is from the WeChat official account "Yuanchuan Research Institute" (ID: YuanChuanInstitution), written by Luo Xueyan, and is published by 36Kr with authorization.