Deactivating his 100-million-follower account, Xiao Yang Ge "starts all over again"
After two years, Crazy Little Yangge has finally made his comeback, but under the new account name "Qingyang".
The real name of Crazy Little Yangge is Zhang Qingyang. On the evening of October 16, Crazy Little Yangge released a comeback statement on his Douyin account "Qingyang", writing:
"Since the Crazy Little Yangge account suspended live streaming, I have deeply reflected on the violations that occurred in my previous live broadcasts, and completed two years of earnest rectification. In accordance with laws, regulations and platform rules, I will now deregister the original account, register the new account 'Qingyang' to resume live streaming, and I will focus more on content creation and self-operated brand operation."
The signatory is Zhang Qingyang.
As of press time, the number of followers of the "Qingyang" account has reached 43,000. Meanwhile, the "Crazy Little Yangge" account that once had more than 100 million followers is shown as deregistered.
On the night of October 16, Little Yangge and his elder brother Zhang Kaiyang appeared together in the Douyin live stream room of "Yangge Selection". Both of them wore white tops, looked serious and stood properly, stating that they were preparing better works and high-quality content for the audience.
According to New Yellow River reports, staff of Three Sheep confirmed that the person appearing in the live stream was Little Yangge himself. However, the live broadcast only lasted for about 4 to 5 minutes, and "ended after just a few words".
Source: Dahe Daily
Over the past two years, Little Yangge kept trying to make a comeback but never succeeded, but this time his comeback is real.
Right before Little Yangge released the statement, Douyin also announced on the same day that in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and platform rules, and with the approval of competent authorities, Three Sheep Company is allowed to deregister its original accounts, register new accounts, publish content and resume operations on the Douyin platform.
"Welcome the king back", after the news came out, many fans of Little Yangge expressed their welcome for his return on social platforms.
However, is the newly returned Little Yangge still the king?
A
Little Yangge is back, but the price he paid is losing the "Crazy Little Yangge" account that had 100 million followers.
From 2018 to 2022, it took Crazy Little Yangge five years to make the number of followers of his Douyin account exceed 100 million, making him the first and only individual streamer on Douyin with more than 100 million followers.
Before the original account was deregistered, data from third-party platforms showed that the account had 93 million followers. At its peak, the number of followers once reached 120 million, which means that Little Yangge lost 27 million followers in the past two years.
Even so, the gap between the 93 million followers of the old account and the less than 40,000 followers of the new Qingyang account is obvious at a glance.
"Hello brothers", on the evening of October 16, Little Yangge announced his comeback on the new account "Qingyang". On the same day, dozens of counterfeit "Qingyang" accounts popped up on Douyin. Finally, LetterRank found the new accounts of both Big Yangge and Little Yangge from the Douyin homepage of Little Yangge's apprentice Zui Ge.
On the night of October 16, the number of followers of "Qingyang" once rose to 48,000, but after one night, the expected sharp surge of followers did not happen. Instead, it lost 5,000 followers and dropped to 43,000.
On the other side, the original account of Crazy Big Yangge (Daily Life) which had tens of millions of followers is also shown as deregistered, and the new account "Kai Yang" has 42,000 followers. The two brothers have less than 100,000 followers in total on their new accounts.
At the same time, the official account of "Three Sheep" with 8.85 million followers has been renamed as "Yangge Selection", which is a self-operated brand under Little Yangge. However, the account is currently shown as forbidden to follow.
Behind these changes is a long adjustment that Three Sheep has experienced since September 2024.
At that time, Three Sheep was identified by Hefei market supervision department as having constituted false commercial promotion for selling products such as "Hong Kong Meicheng Mooncake" and "Australian Grain-fed Beef Rolls" through live streaming. The company had its illegal gains confiscated and was fined a total of 68.9495 million yuan, and all its matrix accounts stopped broadcasting on Douyin.
In March 2025, the Hefei Joint Investigation Team issued an announcement stating that after comprehensive evaluation, the rectification of Three Sheep Company met the requirements and it had the conditions to resume operations. Three Sheep also released a rectification notice, stating that it had carried out all-round investigation and rectification on 7 special items including investment promotion, product selection, quality control and price verification.
However, even with the conditions to resume operations, Little Yangge still failed to officially return to the live stream room, and Douyin did not give a clear attitude.
During this period, rumors about Little Yangge's comeback never stopped, but all ended with no results.
In January 2025, the WeChat Channel account "Yangge Selection" of Three Sheep started live streaming, but stopped broadcasting in less than a week; in February, Little Yangge was suspected of resuming live streaming on Douyin wearing a green fish head cover, but this was quickly denied by Three Sheep; in May of the same year, Little Yangge appeared in the birthday video posted by director Wong Jing on Douyin, looking restrained; in August, the topic "Three Sheep Comeback" became a hot search on Weibo, but like every previous rumor, there was no substantial progress.
After countless false alarms, Little Yangge finally got a clear signal for his comeback this time. On October 16, Douyin stated that with the approval of relevant competent authorities, Three Sheep is allowed to resume operations on Douyin, but it is required to deregister the original accounts and register new accounts.
B
In the past two years, the live streaming business was suspended, but Little Yangge did not stop his commercial layout. For example, self-operated brand is one of the important directions for Little Yangge. In his latest statement, Little Yangge also stated that he will focus on the self-operated brand.
"Yangge Selection" is a self-operated brand founded by Little Yangge in 2023, whose sales volume exceeded 26 million orders within one year after its launch.
In the past two years, Little Yangge has made frequent moves on "Yangge Selection". On the one hand, the Douyin live stream room of "Yangge Selection Self-operated Products" has never stopped broadcasting. This account has 3.54 million followers, and all products sold in the live stream room are self-operated products of Yangge Selection.
Since the beginning of this year, this account has carried out 374 live streaming sales sessions, attracting a total of 7.8 million views, with the total transaction value exceeding 10 million yuan. On October 16, the day when the news of Little Yangge's comeback came out, the traffic of the live stream room rose slightly, and 14,000 people flooded into the live stream room that night, compared with 4,000 people the day before. Many people flooded into the comment section to congratulate him, and hoped that Little Yangge would show up in the live stream.
On the other hand, Little Yangge also launched a self-operated App. Last April, the Yangge Selection App was launched, covering multiple categories such as household cleaning paper products, daily necessities, personal care and beauty. The membership fee is 99 yuan per year, and live streams could also be watched in the App at that time.
Little Yangge also opened offline stores for Yangge Selection. Last October, the first offline store of Yangge Selection opened in Mengcheng, Anhui Province, and the products sold in the store are mainly self-operated products of Yangge Selection. At that time, a video showed that Little Yangge appeared briefly at the opening scene of the offline store.
More importantly, even in the past two years, the second phase of the Three Sheep Network project, which is specially built for "Yangge Selection", has been under urgent construction. The Yaohai District Investment Promotion Center once released news that the second phase project is intended to build the "Yangge Selection" smart cloud warehouse, and after the project is completed and put into operation, its annual economic contribution will not be less than 50 million yuan.
It can be seen that Yangge Selection is an important hidden card in Little Yangge's hand.
In addition to the self-operated brand, the businesses explored by Little Yangge also include live streaming training business and overseas markets. For example, Three Sheep has laid out in overseas markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, and will enter the Brazilian market in the next step.
In February 2026, Three Sheep also won the global operation right of the internet celebrity "Wuyu Ge". Because of this incident, there was even a rumor that Three Sheep was planning to backdoor list. At that time, Three Sheep immediately refuted the rumor, stating that it had not carried out any form of backdoor listing, overall listing or IPO application.
However, compared with other businesses that have been tried in the past two years, the live streaming room is the real foundation of Little Yangge.
At its peak, Three Sheep created an annual live streaming sales output value of more than 10 billion yuan. The GMV of Three Sheep reached 16 billion yuan in 2023, and in the first 5 months of 2024, its GMV increased by 97% year-on-year.
C
After the comeback, what Little Yangge needs to do is very clear: resume live streaming, develop the self-operated brand and create content.
According to Little Yangge's statement, in the future he will create content and do live streaming on the new account "Qingyang". In the past, a single live stream of Little Yangge could attract more than 100,000 concurrent viewers. Now after two years of suspension, how much appeal Little Yangge still has will probably not be known until his official resumption of live streaming.
After all, he is now facing a completely different competition pattern from two years ago.
In the past two years, Dong Yuhui has gradually built up his own live streaming team, and East Buy and Jiao Ge Peng You have also formed a relatively mature account matrix and streamer system. In contrast, the streamer system built by Little Yangge almost completely collapsed, and more than 2,000 streamers cut off ties with Three Sheep.
According to data from third-party platforms, currently, Three Sheep has only 3 signed Douyin accounts. Last March, this figure was 786, and at its peak in September 2024, the figure was 2589.
The most representative example is the termination of the contract of the top streamer "Qi Laoban". Qi Laoban used to be a top streamer under Three Sheep, with about 6 million followers on his Douyin account, and his monthly sales once exceeded 100 million yuan. This February, Qi Laoban announced the termination of the contract with Three Sheep.
A large number of streamers leaving means that it is difficult for Three Sheep to reproduce the scene where multiple streamers take turns to broadcast and drive each other's popularity in a short time. Even if Little Yangge himself comes back, it is not easy to recreate the grand live streaming scene in the past.
In addition to resuming live streaming, self-operated products are also a business that Little Yangge must continue to develop, but this road is not easy either.
According to data from Qimai, since its launch in April 2025, the cumulative download volume of Yangge Selection App is about 950,000, and the live streaming channel in the App has long stopped broadcasting. At least for now, Yangge Selection has not been able to take on the important responsibility.
What's more, more and more top streamers are developing self-operated products now. East Buy turned the tide with its self-operated products, and Dong Yuhui is also making his own customized products.
Little Yangge does have opportunities. Compared with the mid-to-high-end positioning of his competitors, low price is Little Yangge's advantage. But this also means risks, because low price puts higher requirements on supply chain management, cost control and product quality.
More importantly, after the previous controversies related to product sales, if Little Yangge wants to make self-operated products well, product quality and consumer reputation are extremely important.
Finally, and the most critical point, what kind of content Little Yangge will create in the future.
In the past, he became popular because of his "crazy" style. Exaggerated performances, spoof-style plots, and highly dramatic interactions in the live stream room made him quickly accumulate a large number of followers.
However, after experiencing the controversies of live streaming sales and content, Little Yangge needs to rethink the direction of content creation. How to adapt to stricter platform rules and regulatory requirements while retaining his personal characteristics will also be an issue he has to face after his comeback