Tiānyá Shèqū (天涯社区, lit. “Tianya(Long Distance)¹⁾ Community”), or Tianya (天涯), was the once popular Chinese²⁾ social network and bulletin board, founded by “Xíng Míng” (邢明), that ran from March 1999³⁾ to April 2023.⁴⁾ It was known as a place of gossip, south of the Yangzi River.⁵⁾

On March 3, 1999, the website was established at the “tianyaclub.com” domain,⁶⁾ which is why older articles called it “Tianya Club”,⁷⁾⁸⁾ and they slowly gathered a reputation for being a humane forum. Tianya would eventually introduce blogs in late 2003, subsequently entering the public eye in 2004 as people were moved by Xú Běnyǔ's post on being a volunteer teacher in remote mountain villages in Guizhou.⁹⁾¹⁰⁾

Many companies like Sina and Sohu were interested in acquiring Tianya, but the offers were declined as Tianya would only accept investments and shares.¹¹⁾ Tianya would eventually migrate to “tianya.cn” in 2005, then reached a major deal with Google in 2007 which increased their traffic.¹²⁾ However, it'd completely change the community as the quality dropped and older users left.

Soon after, Google terminated its deal when they left Mainland China in 2010, so Tianya lost their traffic and kept bleeding users.¹³⁾¹⁴⁾ The situation worsened during the 2020s with the Data Security Law,¹⁵⁾ then Tianya went offline for “upgrades” on April 26, 2023,¹⁶⁾ except most employees walked away as the company was in the process of liquidating its assets to pay off their immense debt to China Telecom.¹⁷⁾¹⁸⁾

As of June 2023, the company has implied that they managed to retain the website's database and will likely rebuild from the ground up.¹⁹⁾²⁰⁾ They would hold a week-long crowdfunding livestream to restart Tianya, hoping to raise a total of ¥‎300,000,000 RMB,²¹⁾ but fell short and raised under ¥‎150,000 RMB.²²⁾ Despite an obvious setback, the company's founder refuses to give up on its revival.

• Tiānyá Bókè (天涯博客, lit. “Tianya Blog”)
• Tiānyá Xiàngcè (天涯相册, lit. “Tianya Photo Album”)
• Tiānyá Yóujú (天涯邮局, lit. “Tianya Post Office”)
• Tiānyá Shōucáng (天涯收藏, lit. “Tianya Collection”)
• Tiānyá Yóuxì (天涯游戏, lit. “Tianya Game”)
• Tiānyá Xiǎoyóuxì (天涯小游戏, lit. “Tianya Minigame”)
• Tiānyá Wèndá (天涯问答, lit. “Tianya Q&A”)
• Tiānyá Láiba (天涯来吧, lit. “Tianya Come On”)

• The name “Tianya” is a reference to Tianya Haijiao in Hainan, the founder's hometown, plus it was meant to be a sister site to the regional portal, Hǎinán Zàixiàn (海南在线, lit. “Hainan Online”).²³⁾
• It should be noted that Tianya did exist when the United States and NATO had bombed the Chinese embassy in 1999 and when the United States and China collided near Hainan in 2001.
• The issue with the “Tianya Club” translation is that it would be “Tiānyá-shè” (天涯社) instead, as they ignore the “qū” (区) hanzi, but I suppose that “Tianya Club” was easier to type out.
• I haven't found the rumored Detroit Lions content that the user named “Kòuròu Shuàigē” (扣肉帅哥),²⁴⁾ or “Hong Zhou”, mentioned in his famous Reddit posts on the /r/detroitlions subreddit.²⁵⁾

• Qiangguo - Historically, a counterpart for those north of the Yangzi River.²⁶⁾

• Tianya Shequ - The front page of Tianya Shequ.
  • Tianya Shequ [Archive] - The front page of Tianya Shequ, archived March 30, 2023.
• Tianya Shequ on Baidu Baike [ZH]