Tianya Community Founder Dismisses Skeptics as Traffic Cools After Relaunch: 'Failure Is Unlikely This Time'
Three years after going dark, Tianya Community — one of China’s earliest and most iconic internet forums — flickered back to life on June 1. Half a month later, the initial surge of nostalgia-driven traffic has predictably ebbed. But for founder Xing Ming, that cooling-off was not a warning sign; it was the plan all along.
In an interview published June 23 by Xiaoxiang Morning Herald, Xing said the post-relaunch deceleration was exactly what he wanted — a return to a low-profile, step-by-step recovery centered on actually getting things done. “I’m used to being underestimated,” he said, “but this time, the probability of failure is very low.”
The June 1 launch date was deliberate, Xing noted, laughing off the online joke that it was “a Children’s Day gift for the post-70s and post-80s generations.” But the nostalgia play had limits. “Tianya coming back shouldn’t be an exercise in retro,” he stressed. “It needs to get younger.”
The numbers from the first week were encouraging. Xing said the “Tianya Divine Posts” mini-program — a curated collection of legendary threads from the forum’s heyday — jumped from tens of thousands of registered users to nearly 200,000 within days of the relaunch.
A New Business Model
Tianya’s original incarnation was famous for incubating blockbuster intellectual property that it never monetized. Serialized novels like Ghost Blows Out the Light and The Ming Dynasty Stories first took shape on Tianya’s boards, as did the career of China’s first viral internet celebrity, “Sister Furong.” But the platform itself captured little of the value it helped create.
That is changing this time around. Xing outlined plans for a paid-content ecosystem with tipping mechanics — users can purchase virtual items to reward authors directly. The approach, he said, delivers income to creators while giving Tianya a sustainable, low-overhead revenue model. The content pipeline will also fan out across short-video and micro-drama formats, with roughly 30 potential partners already reaching out in the past month alone.
The new Tianya, branded “New Tianya Guest,” is repositioned as a “global travel and fashion lifestyle social e-commerce platform.” Content will cluster around fashion, trends, and travel, with a member-store model driving commerce. Early adopters are the same users willing to pay for access to Tianya’s archive of classic posts, and Xing aims to reach one million paid subscribers by 2028.
From Glory to Shutdown
Founded in 1999 by Xing, then a stock-market enthusiast building a place to share trading ideas, Tianya grew into one of the defining communities of China’s early internet. It nurtured a generation of writers, thinkers, and provocateurs at a time when Chinese cyberspace was still finding its voice.
The platform’s fortunes shifted with the rise of mobile-first social media. A brief stint on China’s NEEQ exchange between 2015 and 2018 ended in delisting, with a peak valuation of around one billion yuan. By April 2023, unable to pay its bills and buffeted by lawsuits, bank credit freezes, and staff departures, Tianya pulled the plug, citing “technology upgrades and data restructuring” before admitting to severe liquidity problems a month later.
Three years on, Xing insists the comeback rests on far sturdier foundations: two to three years of preparation, legal safeguards around data recovery, dedicated funding, a young team coalescing around the project, and a pragmatic business model. “Even if something major goes wrong,” he said, “we’ve survived the hardest times — that resilience will carry us into new territory.” He asked for patience from the public, promising to “protect and carry forward this unique presence.”
Whether Tianya can recapture anything close to its former cultural gravity remains an open question, but for the first time in years, the lights are on — and the founder is willing to bet they will stay that way.