Pioneering internet portal Tianya.cn goes dark, triggering nostalgia among Chinese netizens

Chinese web portal Tianya.cn, once a strategic partner of Google and a vibrant online community for discussing sensitive social and political topics, has become inaccessible this week, triggering nostalgia among netizens about the days of relatively free online speech in China.

Tianya Community Network Technology Co, which launched the service in March 1999 when the internet was in its infancy in China, has not officially announced any decision to shut it down. Earlier this month Tianya.cn said it would “conduct technical upgrade and data reconfiguration, during which the website will become inaccessible”.

However, Tianya.cn has been struggling with a cash crunch, owing its server supplier China Telecom more than 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million). To help pay the debt the portal had to sell all its assets to the telecoms operator, but retained ownership of its data. The operation also lost many employees due to delayed payment of wages, with only around 20 remaining, Chinese media Leiphone reported on Wednesday.

Neither Tianya.cn nor China Telecom immediately responded to a request for comment.

Chinese netizens called the website suspension “the end of an era” and “the tears and regrets of youth”. Tianya.cn was a household name among the country’s early internet users who primarily accessed the web via personal computers. It had more than 1 million registered users as of June 2015, according to its then filing to the National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), an over-the-counter exchange.

In 2007, Google acquired a stake in Tianya.cn for an undisclosed amount, and the two companies co-developed web products under Tianya’s name that were terminated three years later. The Chinese company repurchased its shares from the American giant in 2010, when Google quit the China market, Tianya.cn founder Xing Ming told The Beijing News in 2015.