Tianya Community, China's once-iconic online forum, officially resumed access on June 1, 2026, after a three-year shutdown. Photo: VCG

China's once-iconic online forum Tianya Community officially resumed operations on Monday after a three-year hiatus, triggering a wave of nostalgia among Chinese internet users, with surging traffic reportedly causing the website to crash repeatedly on its first day back online.

On Sunday night, Tianya Community's official Weibo account released a statement announcing the opening while detailing the progress of its restoration. The platform had been inaccessible since April 1, 2023, due to unpaid telecommunications data center fees. Over the past three years, a relaunch team had worked to preserve Tianya's vast archive of user-generated content and restore public access to the site.

The statement also noted that Tianya Community and China Telecom had reached a legally binding arbitration ruling through the Hainan International Arbitration Court regarding data migration, marking a major breakthrough in preserving the platform's historical data and paving the way for its return.

The forum was relaunched under a new domain, www.tianya.net, and access will be resumed section by section, per the statement. 

Despite the official reopening, the Global Times reporter found on Monday that the new website was frequently inaccessible.

Ailiwen, a netizen born in the 1980s who described himself as an active Tianya user in 2000s, told the Global Times that he had been closely following developments since February and stayed up until midnight waiting for the relaunch.

"I couldn't get in at first and kept refreshing the page. It wasn't until around five o'clock in the morning that I finally managed to enter the site," he said.

"Honestly, I haven't used the forum for a very long time, but I was still excited when I heard it was coming back."

After logging in, Ailiwen said he immediately visited Tianya Huicui, one of the platform's most popular sections showcasing its classic high-quality posts, where he rediscovered classic long-form posts he had bookmarked years ago, including an online historical fiction first serialized on Tianya Community Those Things in Ming Dynasty and an unsolved mystery book Cold Case Reopened.

However, after logging out in the morning, he was unable to access the site again later in the day. Customer service told him that sudden surge in traffic had temporarily overwhelmed the system and advised users to try again later.
The relaunch statement explained that the original tianya.cn domain remains unavailable for the time being. The company currently entrusted with operating Tianya's data can only provide access through the tianya.net domain. It emphasized that ownership of Tianya Community's brand, historical data, and other core assets remains unchanged and still belongs to Tianya Community.

The platform said it will first restore browsing of past posts, with an aim to gradually restore interactive functions in June as data migration approvals are completed and system upgrades continue, while ensuring data security and regulatory compliance.

The comeback has sparked lively discussions online and once topped Weibo's trending topics list. Many users described Tianya as a defining part of their youth.

"For those born in the 1980s and 1990s, Tianya carried a lot of memories," one netizen wrote. "Before internet became so developed, it was where we spent countless happy hours." Another netizen also recalled the forum's golden age, attributing its popularity to high-quality grassroots writers, vigorous debates, and quality content, calling it a "spiritual utopia" of China's early internet era.

Others questioned whether nostalgia alone could sustain the platform. Some described the relaunch as little more than a "nostalgia tax" aimed at middle-aged internet users, while others argued that pure text-based forums struggle to attract younger audiences in an era dominated by short videos and algorithm-driven content.

"Every generation has its own online communities," one netizen noted. "Our habits of consuming information have already changed."

In its relaunch announcement, Tianya wrote: "The posts you wrote, the friends you met, and the articles you saved are all still here."

"That sentence really touched me," Ailiwen said. "It felt like my memories mattered. But at the same time, I honestly don't know where Tianya goes from here."
Founded in 1999, Tianya Community once boasted more than 130 million registered users and over 250 million monthly visitors, earning a reputation as one of China's most influential online forums. The platform suspended services in 2023 amid financial difficulties, the Paper.cn reported, citing public records.