"Restart" Tianya: A Farewell Celebration Banquet with a Goal of 3 Million RMB | Tianya | Goal

Farewell to an Internet community is nothing new nowadays. Even though it is Tianya, the world's largest Chinese language community 15 years ago.

However, there is a group of former netizens who do not think so.

After Tianya announced that the website was temporarily closed due to server issues, the first employee of Tianya, Lao Hei, and a group of Tianya netizens stepped forward and launched a live sales event called "restarting Tianya for seven days and seven nights". They want to raise 3 million yuan through live streaming sales to restart the servers of the Tianya community and restart the website.

Seven days later, on the closing night of the live broadcast room, Lao Hei announced that the total sales of the live broadcast room were about 361000 yuan, with an estimated profit of 149900 yuan plus tipping income, only achieving 1/20 of the initial target. The live streaming team also acknowledged the judgment from the outside world that "seven days and seven nights of live streaming cannot save Tianya.".

As a result, this is a slightly sad and quixotic story: Tianya, which once led the Internet trend of a generation, no longer belongs to this era. Its once loyal users tried to find their voice and once gathering place on the most popular Internet platform, and then they failed.

The people in it have experienced chaos, questioning, and failure, but they have also gained another precious thing: a less silent farewell.

restart

Lao Hei has been wearing his employee T-shirt from his time at Tianya, and at that time he was still called Xiao Hei. Photo by Lin Zilu

When helping Xing Ming, the founder and CEO of Tianya, spread the news that Tianya servers were temporarily shut down due to unpaid fees, Lao Hei did not know that he would step forward in ten days and become the person who cheered for the restart of Tianya.

Without a doubt, his life has a profound imprint from the ends of the earth. He is the first group of users of Tianya Community, and became the first employee of Tianya Company in 2001. Since then, he has turned to the emerging Internet media industry, becoming the executive editor of Tianya along the way, witnessing and even promoting the glory of Tianya. Even today, in situations where it is necessary to introduce oneself to strangers, the identity of the former editor in chief of Tianya still accompanies Lao Hei - this is his identity that he will not take off.

But Tianya has indeed left Old Black's life. In 2009, he left Tianya Company due to a disagreement with Xing Ming's philosophy. He doesn't even remember exactly when he last went to Tianya. It was about four or five years ago when he posted a promotional post for the company he worked for on Tianya.

In fact, even if the servers on Tianya can really be restarted, for Lao Hei, he doesn't have any posts to retrieve - he was a Tianya netizen too early, as early as 20 years ago, and it is unknown whether the old posts were preserved before.

A mysterious thing happened because Tianya was temporarily considered dead, and the concept of "Tianya" once again emerged from his life.

"Tianya can't just leave silently like this," thought Lao Hei. A stronger emotion than sadness is unwillingness. He has witnessed the best times of Tianya and how Tianya missed out on opportunities for transformation time and time again. He still believes that Tianya should not be like this, at least it should not be "discovered and disappeared several days after leaving.".

Not only does he think so. He was approached by a netizen named Fushu who had known Tianya for over 20 years. He asked if he wanted to step forward and do something to bring Tianya back into people's sight. They only talked for an hour before finalizing each other's ideas.

"In the first half of the hour, I was pushing him. I was telling him that live streaming sales could be done, but in the second half of the hour, he was pushing me along," said Fusu.

The next day, Lao Hei, who was still in Hefei, arrived in Suzhou, where Fusu was located. This seven day and seven night live streaming sales plan was finalized within two days.

There is a board in the live broadcast room with a simple timetable written on it. Photo by Lin Zilu

To some extent, the live streaming plan of "restarting Tianya" has indeed restarted some of the former Tianya. The bonds and connections between people are awakened through this live streaming program.

Lao Hei contacted many of his former friends as guest broadcasters, and to his surprise and satisfaction, even if he hadn't seen them for many years, his old friends would still agree to help him, "also helping Tianya.". He still remembers the first day of the broadcast, when the old moderator Luo Bing brought his guitar to the live broadcast room.

"I had a lot of things to say to him, but after the music started, I couldn't do it. I haven't shed tears for so many years, but I cried that day." Lao Hei said that he remembered that ten years ago, when Tianya's friends would always get together, Luo Bing would take his guitar and play the piano, and they would sit beside and listen quietly, just like the live broadcast room at this moment.

Not everyone has left a brilliant mark on the Tianya community like Lao Hei and others, but even as ordinary netizens, people have their own Tianya in their hearts.

"I don't know if Tianya can restart in the end, but my Tianya group has indeed restarted," said netizen Xiao Liu.

He came to Tianya around 2010 due to his research project, which was already the "Bronze Age" of Tianya. However, this did not prevent him from being attracted by the vastness and vastness of Tianya. At that time, he was active in the Tianya community and added a group of netizens called Tianya Cat's Nest. These days, due to the restart of the Tianya topic, this long dormant group has become active again, and the once most familiar old netizens have started sharing their recent situation with each other again.

He also participated in this live broadcast plan himself. He had a friend he had met on Tianya who had passed away a few years ago. The post she had posted on Tianya became a part of her legacy left in the world.

"Tianya has retained a portion of our cyber personality, and I hope it can restart and give me a chance to save it," he said.

Ziang and all the core members of this team don't know each other. At the beginning of the interview, he didn't even want to leave his name, "Just call me a Tianya netizen," he said. He wrote a novel seven or eight years ago and wanted to hear the opinions of netizens, so he began serializing his story on Tianya. The comments and feedback from netizens gave him great motivation. He doesn't like to speak, and the space of words is a necessary habitat for him. He has always been on Tianya, and he is also one of the earliest people to discover that Tianya is closed.

In order to leave comments from netizens back then, Ziang, who saw the promotion of this action, came to the live broadcast room. Many times, he is dressed in black and busy silently in the live broadcast room. Sometimes, his work is so trivial that he helps clean up the floor and goods in the live broadcast room. "Do whatever you need," he nodded confidently, "Tianya must restart."

Impact

The live broadcast venue is Haohai Tower. Lin Zilu

The live broadcast room borrowed from "Restarting Tianya for Seven Days and Seven Nights" is located in Haohai Building on Entrepreneurship Street in Zhongguancun, Beijing. Originally, this tens of square meters of space at the corner of the second floor was a small Internet innovation incubation base. In the past seven days, it has assumed the dream of reviving the once largest Chinese Internet community.

In this small room, the team from Tianya restarted and broadcasted for seven days. Photo by Lin Zilu

Office, live streaming, and even product storage are all stored in this small space. The live broadcast room is separated separately, and the live broadcast equipment also includes the staff's own mobile phones. On the night of connecting to Tianya CEO Xing Ming, the mobile phones went on strike due to overheating, and the live broadcast was forced to be interrupted.

After the disconnection, the number of online viewers, which had originally reached over 1400 people, fell back to three digits. Even if the live broadcast resumed after about ten minutes, the number of online viewers in the live broadcast room did not increase - this was originally a highlight of the seven day live broadcast, because it was Xing Ming's first appearance after Tianya closed, directly answering questions from netizens.

The live streaming device is the staff's mobile phone, which was once interrupted due to insufficient memory. Photo by Lin Zilu

The other side of this passionate story has been revealed. The origin of the "Restart Tianya" live broadcast plan can almost be considered as a momentary impulse of the old Tianya people, but entering the logic of "business" and "selling goods", a passionate passion is obviously not enough.

The core leaders of the "Restart Tianya" live streaming plan, Fu Su and Lao Hei, have no direct live streaming experience before. Lao Hei's Tiktok has only 20 fans, and he hasn't even taken a video of his own appearance. Fusu actually had a professional e-commerce live streaming team under his command - this team was later summoned by him to participate in the plan to join the live streaming Tianya, but he "involved many industries" and did not really personally coordinate the live streaming.

Lao Hei still retains the mindset of the Tianya era. During his ten years as executive editor in chief, most of the hot topics on Tianya are influenced by his push, and he is not unfamiliar with hyping up a topic.

The live broadcast target of seven days and seven nights is a gimmick planned by Lao Hei. I need to use this uninterrupted way to awaken everyone's attention to the ends of the world. At first, Lao Hei even planned to start this seven day long run on the special day of May 20th, but the live streaming team and materials couldn't keep up, so he only postponed it for a week.

But from a professional perspective of live streaming e-commerce, this seven day and seven night live broadcast itself is unreasonable. The platform side of Tiktok has suggested to the old black people that if they can't continue to broadcast live, they can't get the promotion traffic of the new broadcast, and the data will be much worse. Moreover, in many time periods, live streaming is not very effective, for example, at three or four o'clock in the morning, the number of online users in the live streaming room often does not exceed fifty.

There was no printer in the venue, and from the fourth day they finally set up a guest nameplate. Photo by Lin Zilu

The narrative pursued by the times is also undergoing changes. Before the start of the broadcast, Lao Hei felt that as long as there was a name for Tianya, selling anything was not important. "I think netizens would be willing to pay this emotional tax, and there is more than one person who misses Tianya like me." Lao Hei said that he had heard the story of Luo Yonghao and Yu Minhong's live broadcast turning over and optimistically believed that this was also a replicable miracle. He even envisioned selling a badge similar to the Savior of the End of the World in the live broadcast room for 9999 yuan, selling 300 copies, and that was it.

But in fact, the best-selling Tianya related products are 99 yuan cultural shirts with the Tianya logo printed on them, selling over a thousand pieces. Among all the goods, the best-selling one is the black drawstring garbage bag priced at 9.9 yuan, with a commission of only a few cents.

They want to compete against Eastern selection, but Tianya Community itself does not have the genes for live streaming sales. These netizens who are accustomed to conveying emotions and ideas through text may even resist live streaming sales. For the seven days and seven nights of live broadcast, Lao Hei made a special trip to the live broadcast room of Du Zijian and other Tiktok celebrities to learn from the experience, and also learned to speak the words of "family members pay little attention" and other live broadcast cries.

On the big screen of the live broadcast room, there are reminders posted, "More interactive sales". Photo by Lin Zilu

Lao Hei also learned some interactive skills. He displayed a gift book signed by Xing Ming, which will be given to tonight's top scorer. Photo by Lin Zilu

However, netizens are not satisfied with the bowing down anchors. In the live broadcast room, netizens have complained all the time, "Tiktok was specially sent for you, but the fact that the live broadcast brought goods has lowered the style of Tianya". "You might as well open a collection channel, I'm sure you will donate". In the first few days, the revenue from tipping in the live broadcast room did indeed exceed the profit income from live streaming sales.

The grudges between netizens and Tianya Company have also been brought into this live broadcast room. Although Lao Hei almost explains in every live broadcast that this is a public welfare live broadcast initiated by netizens on Tianya, all the profits will only be used to restart the Tianya community and have nothing to do with Tianya Company, there will still be repeated barrage comments such as "repay me the money for Tianya diamonds" and "have employees paid social security?".

The staff reminded Blackie not to mention forbidden words during the live broadcast to avoid being limited or warned by Tiktok.

This volunteer work team chose to fully accept the criticism of this live broadcast from the outside world. They never shy away from their lack of professionalism. "It's a miracle to be able to achieve something," said Yongmei, who is in charge of public relations and outreach. "None of us understand live streaming. We see the media saying that what we did was a failure. I say this is not just a failure, it's just a scene of a car accident.".

She once worked at the top of Interactive Encyclopedia and Alibaba, "it's been a long time since she took over such a chaotic project.". She smiled and said, "If it were the team I led back then, I would definitely have scolded them to death. Can you imagine it? A regular promotional poster, with three revised versions and typos on it." But this was a temporary volunteer team, and everyone was putting in time, energy, and money for this potentially fruitless event. She couldn't criticize any more.

They are also reflecting on the so-called "failure". The black man realized that the topic of "restart Tianya seven days and seven nights" could hardly attract the most active young people on the Internet. It is almost traditional media that came to find him, and their attitude is mostly sympathetic. "Reboot Tianya" is nowhere to be seen on hotter platforms.

"People can't inspire something that doesn't exist. How can I talk to the post-95s and post-2000s about how powerful Tianya is? They can't have feelings for Tianya." He realized that the purpose of this live broadcast was to bring back a generation of old friends, and there must be more people who miss Tianya than just those who have seen them so far. "This is the collective memory of a generation of Internet people," he said.

Yongmei also doesn't regret being "all in" this project. "I think it's cool to be able to do something a bit silly together," Yongmei said. She was so immersed that even her husband was worried about her physical condition, but she felt that if she had to start over again, she would still choose to join this project and burn it like this.

"There are not many opportunities for people to burn for something in their lifetime. I think we are a group of idealistic fools, but isn't idealism good?" she said.

Where is the end of the world

Lao Hei is live streaming in the live broadcast room. Photo by Lin Zilu

On the evening of June 3rd, there was not much sadness in the face of "failure" in this live broadcast room, which was about to end its mission. People embrace each other here and say "it's hard" to each other. The behind the scenes team of the live broadcast and many old Tianya netizens who came from other places stood in front of the farewell camera in the live broadcast room, and the common farewell phrase in martial arts novels, "Tianya is not far away, goodbye in the martial arts world," repeated in the live broadcast room.

They still plan to continue doing it. Most of the members of the restart team who came to the live broadcast room were asked the same question by me, "I didn't raise three million, what are you going to do next?"

The answer I received was almost the same, "At least we will continue to do it for a while." The online volunteer, Xiao Liu, also said that if Old Black Brother still needs it, he is willing to do something more, at least during the time before restarting the server on Tianya.

At least three million must be raised, and this goal has become an invisible rope that has twisted these people together.

"This is very remote," said the barrage review in the live broadcast room.

This sentence seems to be used to give rationality to everything that happens in this live broadcast room, even the disconnection of the live broadcast due to equipment overload reminds netizens of the days when "Uncle Ya took a break". Tianya's technology is not leading. Different from the algorithm recommendation technology that web3.0's overlord, ByteDance, prides itself on, this website of the early generation of Internet giants relied on for survival in that year, and it was Tianya's netizens who were once active here.

That's why the old black people came forward. "Tianya Community and Tianya Company are two things," Lao Hei said.

This is also the consensus of restarting the Tianya team members. At first, Lao Hei set the slogan as "Save Tianya". Soon, he felt that it was wrong for Tianya to save Tianya. Nobody could decide the future of Tianya. Tianya's netizens paid more attention to their memories on Tianya's website. What they could win was just this part - to give netizens a chance to say goodbye to their past Internet memories.

Lao Hei believes that by this standard, this live broadcast may not necessarily be a failure. Although the gesture may not be decent and good-looking, "this may be the last thing that our generation of Internet users can do, so we can take this opportunity to celebrate and bid farewell to Tianya."

On the closing night, people took a group photo. Photo by Lin Zilu

In this seven day and seven night live broadcast, they found a part of the subjectivity belonging to Tianya netizens. Tianya has been in decline for a long time. The Internet trendsetters who were once active in Tianya are now middle-aged. New platforms are constantly emerging. From Weibo Zhihu to Tiktok Little Red Book, active and creative netizens are never scarce. The past glory is difficult to reproduce, but at this moment, in this live broadcast room, recalling old dreams is the most timely thing. Tianshui used to be the moderator of the Tianya Irrigation Zone, and this cheerful Beijing girl came to the live broadcast room to help on both the first and last day. She said, "You know, my biggest feeling is surprise. It's just that someone wants to save Tianya, which is seen as a matter, not a joke."

As she spoke, her old friends, including Little Green Man, leaned over to greet her. Little Green Man still called her a maid, as if she were the same little girl from twenty years ago.

This live broadcast room is like a web, salvaging the once remote people. Lao Hei noticed that every late night, the live broadcast room seemed to transform into a midnight radio station. At this time, he would put the plan of live streaming sales back, sometimes simply not bringing sales and chatting with netizens. Familiar IDs will appear, and he will excitedly recite their names and tell stories from the past. There will also be unfamiliar netizens telling stories about the world they don't know, and he is equally happy to see these, "This is the inheritance of the world."

He sometimes feels that if the live broadcast room were changed to a midnight radio like mode later on, it would also seem good. The Tianya community that he misses seems to be reproducible in another form. "Times have changed, but friendship has not changed, and emotions have not changed," he said.

Old Black couldn't help but think about the future. Although from the beginning, he would emphasize that the "Restart Tianya" team cannot answer the question of "what Tianya will do in the future", which is too heavy, only Tianya Company can take responsibility for this issue. The three million they raised was just for rescuing the patient in this ICU and letting everyone take another look at him.

However, whether in live streaming connections or in their own team discussions, this issue remains unavoidable. Not everyone can accept investing in a product with a clear deadline. To restart Tianya, to some extent, means reviving people's confidence and dependence on the Tianya brand. The questioning from investors is even more direct. They want to save Tianya. What should Tianya, which has few users, do after saving it?

The answer is currently not clear. Laohei hopes that Tianya Community can become a static Internet history museum, which can lose all functions as long as the past can be retained. Xing Ming didn't think so. On the night of the live broadcast connection on June 1, he said optimistically, "If there were 200 million yuan, Tianya might return to the forefront of the Internet."

The audience in the live broadcast room posted directly in the barrage, "Mr. Xing, stop dreaming." The on-site staff also shook their heads gently and whispered, "Mr. Xing is still like this, it's too naive."

This is the case. People miss Tianya and say goodbye to Tianya, but people may not really need such an ancient Internet product. Iteration is the basic logic of the Internet. No giant can fail to follow this rule.

Volunteer Yang Ming, who came to help, said at the celebration banquet that he felt that restarting Tianya's live broadcast actually raised a question: Does Tianya still need to be in this era? He had already said this during his farewell in the live broadcast, and in the evening, he drank a lot of alcohol. In the gap between raising his glass, he repeated this question again.

I asked Yang Ming, what is the answer in your heart? He thought for a moment and told me that he also had no answer. He felt that only the outcome of restarting Tianya could provide a true answer to this question. And it's not yet time to submit the paper.