Opening: September 15, 2018 - A Collective Farewell
At 5 PM on September 15, 2018, a seemingly trivial yet profoundly significant event occurred on China's internet—QQ Pet officially ceased service. Behind Tencent's cold announcement, millions of users flooded QQ Zone and Weibo with farewell posts of all kinds:
"I used to find it annoying, now it's really leaving."
"I never got to see her get married, and I've had the diamond ring ready for so long."
"My QQ Pet married my first love's QQ Pet in the game, even though we haven't contacted each other for seven years."
These seemingly childish messages were actually a generation's formal farewell to their youth. That virtual penguin that once needed daily feeding, bathing, working, marrying, and laying eggs—that digital pet you might have raised for over a decade, that accompanied you through middle school, high school, and college—finally died quietly in some corner of a server.
This was not an isolated case. In 2016, Renren was sold; in 2019, QQ Mail's Drift Bottle closed; in 2023, Tianya Community became inaccessible due to unpaid fees; in 2025, QQ Short Video announced its shutdown. China's internet archaeological site is littered with digital ruins that once carried the youthful memories of hundreds of millions.
Yet above these ruins, a green penguin still breathes stubbornly. It's called QQ—a digital empire born in 1999 that has accompanied China's internet for a full quarter century. It's not just an instant messaging software, but a digital archive for 800 million Chinese netizens—housing the scarce glory of five-digit QQ numbers, the secret language of "invisible to all except you" crushes, the nationwide frenzy of midnight vegetable stealing, the rise and fall of Shamate families, and countless youth secrets you may have forgotten but the servers will always remember.
This is a history omitted from mainstream internet chronicles. This is a memory that must be measured by emotion rather than data.
Act One: The Technological Revolution of the Internet Cafe Era (1999-2003)
Scene Recreation: Year 2000, an Internet Cafe in a Chinese Third-Tier City
2 AM, smoke-filled air. Rows of yellowing CRT monitors flickered with dim light. A dozen teenagers sat on hard plastic chairs, staring at the bottom right corner of their screens—a green penguin icon wearing a red scarf suddenly jumped, emitting a "di-di-di" notification sound.
"Holy shit, she's online!"
That was the second year after QQ's birth. In that era when mobile internet was still science fiction and most families didn't even have computers, internet cafes were the only window for young Chinese to access the internet. And in this window, there was a fatal problem plaguing all users of instant messaging software: every time you switched computers, your friend list disappeared.
This was ICQ's design flaw—it stored user data locally on the client. For American users with personal computers, this wasn't a problem. But for Chinese internet cafe users who accessed the web from different locations, it meant having to re-add friends every time, starting from zero each session.
Tencent's five founders keenly captured this demand gap. On February 10, 1999, OICQ (QQ's predecessor) was officially released. Its core innovation was extremely simple yet precisely hit the social reality of China's internet: storing friend lists on the server side. No matter which computer you logged in from, no matter which internet cafe you surfed the web at, your social relationship chain always followed you.
This seemingly minor technical adjustment created a miracle in the following nine months—OICQ's registered users exploded from zero to 1 million. In a shabby office in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei, Ma Huateng and Zhang Zhidong stared at the wildly growing user curve with no joy on their faces, only anxiety. Because each additional user meant increased server costs and bandwidth pressure.
It was an absurd era when "having too many users became a burden." Tencent even once tried to sell OICQ to Guangzhou Telecom for 600,000 yuan, but the deal fell through because they thought it was too expensive. History's irony lies in this: if that transaction had succeeded, there might be no Tencent empire today, and no digital youth archive for these 800 million people.
Trademark Dispute and Brand Rebirth
However, misfortune soon struck. On February 7, 2000, America Online (AOL)—then the hegemon of the global internet—officially filed a domain arbitration lawsuit against Tencent, accusing "OICQ" of infringing on its ICQ trademark.
On March 21, 2000, the verdict from the National Arbitration Forum was cold and cruel: Tencent's registered domains oicq.com and oicq.net were registered with "bad faith" and must be transferred to AOL. In the verdict, the arbitrator even pointed out that Tencent's attempt to register "0icq.com" (replacing the letter O with the number 0) constituted ironclad evidence of malicious registration.
This was Tencent's first life-or-death crisis. But Ma Huateng's team demonstrated remarkable adaptability. In November 2000, Tencent officially announced the rebranding to "QQ." This name came from the homophone of the English word "Cute," the reduplication was catchy, and most importantly—it was simple enough and Chinese enough.
Along with the renaming, the little penguin wearing a red scarf officially became the mascot. The establishment of this image was no accident. After testing various icons including pagers and telephones, Tencent found that the penguin best dissolved technology's coldness—it was adorable and harmless, like both a pet and a friend.
A legal defeat actually helped Tencent complete its identity transformation from "technology imitator" to "independent brand." From then on, China's internet had its own green totem.
Act Two: The Commercial Code of the Virtual Empire (2003-2008)
January 24, 2003 - A Day That Changed Tencent's Fate
If server-side storage solved QQ's survival problem, then QQ Show solved its profitability problem. And the inspiration for this product that saved Tencent surprisingly came from a chance business trip to Korea.
In 2002, Tencent product manager Xu Liang saw a website called Sayclub in Seoul. This website sold virtual avatar decoration services—users could purchase clothes, hairstyles, and backgrounds for their avatars. Xu Liang keenly realized: wasn't this the business model QQ needed?
After returning to China, he worked overnight to write a 65-page PPT including market strategy, financial forecasts, and staffing plans. After reading it, Ma Huateng immediately approved: do it.
On January 24, 2003, QQ Show went into trial operation. Six months later, the data shocked everyone: 5 million users paid, averaging 5 yuan per person. This seemingly simple virtual decoration function brought Tencent real cash flow.
Ma Huateng himself became one of the first users. He dressed his virtual avatar in long hair, sunglasses, and tight jeans, looking like a rock star. A Tencent internal employee later recalled: "Pony's (Ma Huateng's English name) enthusiasm for QQ Show exceeded imagination. He truly believed that identity expression in the virtual world was a human necessity."
Facts proved him right. QQ Show not only saved Tencent from financial crisis but also pioneered a completely new business model—virtual privilege economy. The subsequently launched "Red Diamond VIP" system (10 yuan/month subscription) quickly broke through ten million in revenue. The derived Yellow Diamond (QQ Zone), Green Diamond (QQ Music), Pink Diamond (QQ Pet), and Blue Diamond (QQ Games) constructed a complete paid membership empire.
A commentator said: "Without QQ Show, Tencent might have died in 2003." This statement is no exaggeration. QQ Show proved a truth ignored by global internet companies: In the virtual world, humans also need dignity, need identity recognition, need to establish social currency through external symbols. When the real world cannot give young people these things, they will desperately seek them in the digital world.
Hierarchy System: A Sociological Experiment in Leveling Up by Being Online
If QQ Show satisfied the need for "display," then the QQ level system satisfied the instinct for "competition."
In 2003, Tencent launched the QQ level feature. This function directly quantified users' online time into visible social capital—every 2 hours online counted as 1 day, and after accumulating certain days, the level icon would change:
4 stars = 1 moon
4 moons = 1 sun (level 16)
4 suns = 1 crown (level 64)
The "sun" level became early users' core pursuit, because only reaching the sun allowed creating QQ groups and customizing avatars. This design of linking core functional privileges to online time greatly stimulated users' willingness to be online.
Thus, a peculiar phenomenon was born: hanging-up culture.
Countless users developed the habit of being online 24/7—even when not using the computer, they kept QQ online. This even spawned a gray "proxy hanging" industry chain: internet cafes and individuals provided specialized servers to help users hang online 24/7 for leveling up, charging from 5 to 20 yuan per month.
This behavior triggered social controversy about electricity waste. Environmental activists estimated: if 10 million computers idled for QQ leveling, the annual electricity wasted equaled the power generation of a small hydroelectric station.
In 2005, Tencent was forced to adjust the rules, changing from simple hour accumulation to an "active days" system (being online for 2 hours per day counted as 1 active day, additional hanging was useless), and introduced "acceleration cards" linked to value-added services for leveling up. This adjustment both alleviated electricity waste accusations and further promoted membership sales.
June 7, 2025 at Dawn - A Historic Moment
22 years later, the world's first QQ level 256 user "Ai Jiemo" was born, becoming the first person to possess the "Time Penguin" level icon. Even more amazing: his account was inherited from his father, registered in 2000.
"One QQ for three generations, people die but QQ remains." Netizens' jokes became reality. This five-digit QQ number truly achieved intergenerational inheritance of digital heritage.
Act Three: QQ Zone - The Digital Utopia of 2005
The Social Etiquette of "踩空间" (Stepping on Spaces)
In April 2005, Tencent launched QQ Zone (Qzone). Unlike the popular Sina Blog or MSN Space at the time, Qzone extremely emphasized "decoration" rather than content itself.
For many post-90s users, QQ Zone was the first completely private territory they owned. Carefully selected background music (set to autoplay), melancholic diary entries, encrypted photo albums, non-mainstream signatures—these elements together constituted a generation's digital youth declaration.
"Stepping on spaces" became a social etiquette. Friends increased popularity by visiting each other, leaving brief greetings like "踩踩" (step step), "回踩" (step back) on message boards. This seemingly meaningless interaction was actually an important means of maintaining weak relationships—it told the other person: "I remember you, I care about you."
Yellow Diamond Privileges and Decoration Aesthetics
Ordinary users had limited Qzone options, while "Yellow Diamond" users possessed almost unlimited decoration permissions. This "decoration" culture formed a sharp contrast with blog culture at the time: blogs emphasized content, Qzone emphasized vibe and display.
A user named "Ye Yu" recalled: "In 2007, I was 14 years old. To decorate my QQ Zone, I spent all my allowance on Yellow Diamond. I designed a gothic-style space—black background, blood-red fonts, autoplay of Linkin Park's 'Numb.' The first thing after school every day was refreshing my space to see how many people came to step, whether anyone left messages on the message board. At that time, I felt that having a beautiful space meant having the whole world."
This obsession with decoration reflected teenagers' strong desire for self-identity expression. In real life, their rooms might be designed by parents, school desks were all identical, even the uniforms they wore were the same. But in QQ Zone, they could finally construct their own world according to their own aesthetics.
2009: The Social Experiment of Nationwide Vegetable Stealing
In 2009, QQ Farm went online. This seemingly simple social game completely changed Chinese people's sleep schedules in the following year.
The game rules were extremely simple: plant virtual crops, harvest after maturity, and simultaneously "steal" friends' ripe fruits. It sounded devoid of technical content, but it precisely utilized three human psychologies: possessiveness (planting vegetables), voyeurism (watching what friends are doing), competitiveness (stealing vegetables).
The data was shocking:
By the end of Q3, QQ Zone active accounts grew 33.7% quarterly to 305.3 million
Peak monthly revenue around 50 million yuan, gross profit of 104 million yuan in three months
Tencent urgently purchased numerous servers to handle traffic peaks
"Midnight vegetable stealing" became a social phenomenon. Countless users set alarms for the middle of the night, getting up at 2 or 3 AM to harvest crops to prevent friends from stealing them. Two Guangzhou civil servants were dismissed for delaying work due to addiction to vegetable stealing, making headlines.
Behind this nationwide frenzy was an accidental sociological experiment. QQ Farm proved that: when virtual world rules are simple enough, feedback is immediate enough, and social relationship chains are strong enough, humans can change their behavior patterns in the real world for completely valueless virtual gains.
Loyal players still exist today. In 2023, a 55-year-old Auntie Chen said in an interview: "I've played QQ Farm continuously for 14 years, owning three accounts at levels 402, 377, and 294. I've grown Dry-Fried Beef Noodles, Fish-Flavored Shredded Pork, Kung Pao Chicken... These dishes have become part of my life."
Act Four: The Power Politics of Groups (2002-2024)
From "What to Eat for Lunch Today" to the Digital Grassroots Organization of 2 Billion People
QQ Groups were born in 2002, with the initial inspiration surprisingly coming from an extremely simple workplace need—Tencent employees needed a group to discuss "what to eat for lunch today."
No one expected that this small feature would evolve over the next twenty-plus years into China's largest online community ecosystem. From family groups continuing clan ties, to class groups with education anxiety, from interest groups gathering subcultures, to micro-business groups' commercial empires—QQ Groups carried almost all types of Chinese social relationships.
The Power Inversion of Family Groups
In family groups, an interesting phenomenon occurred: the generational inversion of technological power. Young people held group owner privileges but were often the most silent members; parents, though ordinary group members, were the most active content producers—health articles, holiday greetings, gathering notices constituted family group content.
Group names were often ritualistic: "Imperial Relatives," "Loving Family," "XX Family Glory." This naming method was the continuation of traditional Chinese clan concepts in the digital world.
The Education War of Class Groups
If family groups were sites of generational harmony, class groups (especially parent groups) were battlefields of education anxiety.
In 2020, a Jiangsu parent released a video announcing withdrawal from the parent group, accusing teachers of "transferring" homework grading to parents. This video triggered commentary from CCTV and People's Daily, ultimately promoting over 10 provinces to issue documents explicitly "stopping" parents from grading homework.
In 2024, a Gansu parent was kicked out of the group chat for questioning a teacher assigning homework at 9 PM, again trending on social media. Comments were extremely heated: some supported parents' rights, others accused parents of disrespecting teacher authority.
The essence of these conflicts was: In the seemingly equal digital space of QQ Groups, real-world power structures did not disappear but became more naked and sharp due to the lack of face-to-face social buffering mechanisms.
Evolution of Group Rules: From Anarchy to Hierarchy
QQ Groups' power structure precisely replicated real society's hierarchy. Group owners possessed supreme "life and death" authority; ordinary groups could set 3 administrators, each crown level up adding 1 more.
Early QQ Groups were anarchic—no rules, no review, random screen flooding. But as group members increased, managers had to formulate increasingly detailed rules:
"Sending 6 consecutive meaningless messages counts as flooding, kick out"
"Strictly forbidden to use fonts larger than size 12" (prohibiting big-character posters)
"Forbidden to send illegal information, politically sensitive topics, personal attacks"
"Advertisements need private chat with group owner for permission, otherwise kick out"
A widely circulated "QQ Group Management Standards" even detailed: "Administrators must patrol 3+ times daily," "Kicking requires two administrators' agreement," "If group owner is offline long-term, can initiate democratic vote for replacement."
The evolution of these rules can be called a micro-history of social governance—from wild growth to refined management, from individual dictatorship to democratic consultation.
Legal Intervention: Group Owners' Criminal Responsibility
In 2019, Guangdong Qingyuan Court ruled: 3 QQ group administrators were sentenced to 10 months to 1 year imprisonment for allowing obscene videos to be uploaded in groups.
In 2020, Guangzhou Internet Court ruled: A property group owner who ignored abusive behavior for over a year, the property company must bear civil compensation.
The legal responsibility boundaries of group owners are gradually becoming clear in judicial practice. These precedents send a signal: In the digital world, power and responsibility also need to be proportional.
Act Five: Misunderstood Youth - The Sociological Truth of Shamate and Martian Language
Around 2006, A Village in Meizhou, Guangdong
Luo Fuxing, a fifth-grader, first encountered online games at the village internet cafe. The characters on screen wore exaggerated clothing, had colorful explosive hairstyles, wore glittering accessories—that was "Visual Kei" styling aesthetics. Luo Fuxing stared at the screen without blinking.
"I want to become like that."
Born in 1995, Luo Fuxing had been a left-behind child since age three. His parents went out to work, and he lived successively with his maternal grandfather and paternal grandfather. In school, with poor grades, he was placed in the back row of the classroom, teachers treating him as air. Various childhood neglects became the reason for his later obsession with Shamate styling.
So he walked into the village barbershop, requesting an "explosive head." He also bought hair dye from the two-yuan store, dyeing his hair eye-catching pink. He also applied lipstick, pierced his ears wearing white earrings, wore black clothes, stuck on tattoo stickers, tore holes at the knees of his jeans.
When Luo Fuxing appeared on the street with this exaggerated look, passersby turned their heads. Some whispered, some pointed, but Luo Fuxing felt an unprecedented sense of existence for the first time—in this world that ignored him, he was finally seen.
He used the internet cafe webcam to take photos, posted them online, and received feedback saying "cooler than fashion." Luo Fuxing searched "fashion" on the computer, discovered the word "smart." Having learned English pronunciation with wrong characters since childhood, he read it as "Si-ma-te," later feeling it wasn't domineering enough, changed it to "Sha-ma-te" (Kill-horse-special).
That was around 2006, the name "Shamate" was born.
"Shamate": A Demonized Grassroots Youth Self-Rescue Movement
Luo Fuxing named this style "Shamate" (transliteration of Smart), established QQ groups under the name "Shamate Family," pulling in those who liked his styling. Soon, this styling attracted many similarly lonely and marginalized teenagers. They came from Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, Jiangxi—China's poorest rural areas, dropping out of school early, working in electronics factories, garment factories, and toy factories in Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou.
First semester of middle school, Luo Fuxing dropped out, intermittently working in Shenzhen factories. But his QQ group empire continued expanding—"Burial Love Family," "残Blood Family," "Bloodthirsty Family." At peak, he managed over 20 QQ groups, with at least 200,000 people under effective management. The admission system was extremely strict:
Newcomers must pass reviewers' inspection of their QQ Zone and hairstyle
Hairstyle must meet "anti-gravity" standards (at least 5+ spikes)
After joining, must modify nickname to format "殺獁特のXX"
Strict hierarchy within groups: clan leader, vice clan leader, administrators, elites, ordinary members
In mainstream society's eyes, Shamate was synonymous with "brain-dead," "vulgar," "ugly aesthetics." In 2010, during the national "Anti-Three-Vulgarities" campaign, Shamate was defined as "low-vulgar, vulgar, pandering." In 2013, an online campaign called "Anti-Sha Movement" began—anti-Sha organization members infiltrated Shamate QQ groups, obtained administrator status through deception, then overnight disbanded all members, destroying entire family structures.
Major platforms banned Shamate-related content. Baidu Tieba deleted Shamate Bar, QQ Zone restricted Shamate keyword searches. Luo Fuxing and his followers were driven out of mainstream internet spaces.
Oral History of 78 Shamate Youth
In 2017, documentary director Li Yifan began filming "Shamate I Love You." Starting from Shenzhen, in Guangdong, Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, he completed 67 in-person Shamate interviews and 11 online interviews. Meanwhile, he collected 915 segments of factory assembly line and worker life videos from Shamate and other workers through direct purchase of phone videos. In December 2019, the documentary premiered at Guangdong Times Art Museum.
These interviews revealed a cruel truth:
All interviewed Shamate youth, without exception, came from rural migrant worker groups. Their common characteristics were:
Dropped out of middle school (average dropout age 13-15)
Mostly left-behind children (parents went out to work)
Engaged in low-end manufacturing (electronics factory, garment factory assembly lines)
Poor living conditions (8-12 person dormitories)
Low social status (discriminated against by urban residents)
An interviewee named "Xiao Jie" said: "We're just part of the machines in factories. Work at 7 AM, off at 7 PM, only half an hour for lunch. Except for sleeping, we have no time of our own. This hairstyle is the only thing I can control."
Another girl named "Xiao Feng" said: "My mom says my dressing is embarrassing. But she doesn't know, if I didn't dress like this, I'd be invisible in the city. No one would look at me, no one would remember me."
Shamate was not aesthetic failure, but grassroots youth's self-expression using their only resources. When they had no money, no education, no social status, exaggerated hairstyles became the only "capital" they could control. And QQ Groups were their only spiritual home in the cold city.
Martian Language: Post-90s' Encrypted Language and Generational War
If Shamate was visual resistance, Martian Language was linguistic encryption.
"請罙噯這朶ㄝ孒" (Please deeply love this girl)
"蕜傷縌蓅成河" (Sadness flows upstream into a river)
"莪們①矗茬①起" (We've always been together)
These garbled-looking texts were the mainstream writing style of QQ Zone from 2005-2013. They mixed traditional characters, variant characters, pinyin, symbols, Japanese kana, forming an encrypted system only specific groups could decode.
A user with the screen name "Bing Ning" recalled: "In 2007, I was 14, the home computer was in the living room, my parents could see what I was doing anytime. When chatting with my online dating partner, if I used normal Chinese characters, my mom could understand at a glance. But if I used Martian Language, she couldn't understand at all. This gave me a sense of privacy security."
The motivation for using Martian Language was multifaceted:
Privacy protection: Parents and teachers couldn't decode, creating private space in monitored environments
Identity recognition: Using Martian Language was a "certificate of allegiance" to join QQ groups and Shamate families; those who didn't use it were considered "old-fashioned"
Resisting authority: Martian Language was rebellion against standardized characters and standardized education
Evading censorship: Due to using many non-standard characters, it could effectively bypass keyword filtering
But Martian Language also had a hierarchy of contempt. Advanced users manually used Japanese keyboards, Greek letters, mathematical symbols, considered "technical flow"; low-level users relied on online generators for automatic conversion, mocked as "soulless."
Act Six: The Cultural War of Emojis
2003, That Classic "Grinning Face"
In 2003, QQ 2003 version launched the first system emoji set—the classic "little yellow faces." These emojis came from the hands of a legendary designer "Hui Hui Cai" who had left the company. Among them, the "grinning face" emoji became the emotional code for an entire generation of post-80s.
In 2014, QQ's annual emoji sends exceeded 533.8 billion, with over 90% of 800 million+ users having used emojis in chats. These simple graphic symbols carried emotional density far exceeding text.
However, a generational war over emoji understanding was quietly occurring.
The Intergenerational Gap of the "Smile" Emoji
QQ's "smile" emoji 🙂, when designed, was meant to express pleasure. But in young people's eyes, it became a symbol of "coldness," "perfunctoriness," and even "passive-aggressive sarcasm."
Zhihu user "An Yong's" interpretation received nearly 15,000 likes: "This emoji has no contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle, accompanied by downward eye movement, indicating not only a fake smile but also reflecting a negative mindset. When elders send this emoji, they think they're expressing friendliness; when we receive this emoji, what we feel is coldness and perfunctoriness."
In 2019, a customer service representative was complained about for "bad attitude" for using the "smile" emoji when communicating with customers. After company investigation: the customer service thought it was polite smiling, the customer understood it as sarcasm and impatience.
Data shows different age groups' emoji preferences show significant differences:
Post-00s favorite: "facepalm" 😂
Post-90s favorite: "😂"
Post-80s favorite: "grinning face" 😁
Post-70s favorite: "snickering" 🤭
55+ favorite: "strong" 👍
Emoji preference has become an invisible tag of generational identity.
January 20, 2016: Diba Expedition, "War" Application of Emojis
This was the largest-scale "emoji war" in internet history.
The cause was Taiwanese artist Chou Tzu-yu's forced apology incident. Angry mainland netizens decided to launch a "cultural exchange"—Baidu Li Yi Bar (Diba) with over 20 million users organized an "emoji bombardment" targeting Taiwanese artists' Facebook pages.
The organizational structure was remarkably sophisticated:
Intelligence group: collect target accounts, formulate attack timetables
Propaganda group: publish mobilization orders on major platforms
Design group: mass-produce emojis
Translation group: translate emojis into traditional Chinese
Report group: report counter-attack content
Mobile group: respond to emergencies
Emojis were subdivided into over ten categories: mainland scenery and food, dialects, Huang Zitao, socialist positive energy, Jin Guan Zhang, Yao Ming face, Hyogo Kitamura (Hanazawa Kana)...
At 7 PM, the battle began. Within hours, Facebook pages of Tsai Ing-wen, Chou Tzu-yu and others were flooded with massive comments, almost all emojis. Taiwanese netizens tried to fight back but were completely outmatched in numbers and organization. Eventually, multiple Taiwanese artists were forced to close Facebook comment functions.
This "war" was called a new form of "cultural export" by media. Jin Guan Zhang, Yao Ming face, Hyogo Kitamura were crowned the "Three Giants of Emoji Battle," becoming cultural symbols of China's internet.
Act Seven: Hidden Corners - Online Dating, Invisibility, and Digital Emotions
"Invisible to All Except You": The Most Subtle Emotional Secret Language
Among all QQ functions, "invisible to all except you" might be the design that most evokes emotional resonance.
Its logic is simple: you're invisible to everyone in the world, but show online to one specific person. This means: everyone in the world doesn't know you're online, except him.
A user shared a heartbreaking experience on Zhihu: "I had a crush on her for three years. I set her to 'invisible to all except you,' hoping when she came online she could see me and talk to me. But one day, I discovered she set me to 'invisible to all except her not visible'—she didn't want to see me online. Later, I discovered she set another guy to 'invisible to all except you.' That moment I understood, in her heart, that person was the special one."
This seemingly simple function became a generation's digital secret language for expressing crushes, longing, and testing. Ordinary users could set 10 people, QQ members could set unlimited.
Five-Digit QQ Numbers: Digital Age Noble Badges
In early Chinese internet, QQ number digits were status symbols. A user with a five-digit QQ number shared "privileges" and "troubles":
Receive phishing links attempting account theft 2+ times daily on average
Every three days someone asks if the number is for sale
Two out of ten netizens think you're a hacker
"When picking up girls online, even if she originally planned to ignore you, she might accept your friend request because your number is good"
In 2005, QQ number 88888 sold for 260,200 yuan at a Taobao charity auction, exceeding the price of a Zhang Daqian landscape painting. This price was enough to buy an apartment in a third-tier city at the time.
Online Dating: From "Meeting Disaster" to Primary Way of Finding Partners
Around the millennium, online dating was a romantic novelty. Pizi Cai's "First Intimate Contact" swept the nation, countless people imitated the novel's plot, searching for "Qing Wu Fei Yang" on QQ.
Online dating stories of that era were full of uncertainty:
"We chatted on QQ for three months, every night from 8 PM to 2 AM. I thought she was a gentle, cute southern girl, but when we met I discovered she was a Northeast big sister, 175cm tall, talking like a machine gun. But I still fell in love with her."—A netizen's recollection
"Long-distance online dating for two years, figured out how to get together, real-life dating for two years, married for three years already."—Douban user sharing
Stanford University's 2020 research showed "meeting online" had become the primary way of finding partners, nearly 40%, exceeding traditional methods like introduction by friends or meeting at bars.
But still "when asked, don't dare say online dating, instead choose to say 'fate'"—online dating's stigmatization hasn't completely disappeared.
Act Eight: Pandemic Moment - The Unexpected Transformation of 2020
February 2020, Nationwide School Suspension
The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented nationwide school suspension. The Ministry of Education proposed "classes suspended but learning continues," and overnight, all teachers and students were forced to turn to online teaching.
DingTalk, Tencent Meeting, Xuexitong and other platforms announced free opening, but the ultimate winner was QQ.
Shenzhen survey data (5,103 questionnaires) showed: Tencent Classroom usage accounted for 73.6%, far exceeding DingTalk's 7.7%. The reason was simple—QQ's user base was too massive. Whether teachers, students, or parents, all already had QQ accounts, no need to download, register, or learn new software.
But QQ Group Classroom also exposed many problems:
Technical issues: Occasional lag when hundreds of people online simultaneously, needed everyone to mute for improved smoothness
Discipline problems: Students lacked constraint taking online classes at home, "lying in bed, holding pets, eating snacks in class" became common
Awkward moments: Countless students socially died from "forgetting to mute"—eating sounds, gaming sounds, arguing with parents sounds heard by the whole class
A high school student shared on Zhihu: "The most embarrassing time, I thought I muted, but actually didn't. My mom scolded me for ten minutes outside, the whole class and teacher heard. After class, the class group exploded, all 'hahahahaha'."
43.32% of primary and secondary students believed learning during the pandemic was worse than in-school learning. But this special period allowed QQ to accidentally complete deep penetration into educational scenarios.
Act Nine: 2020-2025 - The Last Stand of Youth Strategy
Decline from 870 Million to 524 Million Monthly Active Users
After QQ reached its historical peak of 870 million monthly active users in 2016, it began continuous decline. In Q4 2024, monthly active users dropped to 524 million, down 5% year-over-year. The gap with WeChat's 1.385 billion monthly active users further widened.
The reasons for decline were obvious: WeChat occupied adults' social time, young people's attention was divided by Douyin, Bilibili, Xiaohongshu. QQ seemed caught between two generations, in a dilemma.
But Tencent didn't give up on QQ. On the contrary, it formulated a clear differentiation strategy: QQ focuses on young people, emphasizing interest-based socializing, entertainment, personality expression; WeChat focuses on acquaintance socializing, work communication.
Data proved this strategy's effectiveness: Questmobile data showed post-00s users' active penetration TGI on QQ was 129.1, on WeChat only 100.7—QQ remained young people's main battleground.
The Failure of QQ Short Video and Reflection
In April 2020, QQ Xiaoshijie launched, renamed "QQ Short Video" in 2023. However announced closure in March 2025.
Reasons for failure were multiple:
Failed to form healthy content ecosystem, criticized as "low-quality ported content hub"
Gen Z users' insufficient spending power, hard to support e-commerce live streaming model
Internal competition with WeChat Video, dispersed resources
This failure proved: In the short video track, simply relying on traffic diversion is insufficient, must have unique content ecosystem and business model.
HarmonyOS Adaptation: Embracing Domestic Operating System
On October 22, 2024, Huawei HarmonyOS NEXT officially released, QQ was in the first batch of supported applications. Since HarmonyOS NEXT uses unique ArkTS language, Tencent had to completely redevelop QQ.
User feedback was generally positive: "HarmonyOS version QQ is smoother, more power-efficient, core functions fully usable."
The significance of this adaptation lies not only in technology but also in attitude—QQ demonstrated determination to embrace domestic ecosystems and accompany Chinese users.
AI Era Exploration
Tencent Hunyuan large model has been integrated into over 700 QQ scenarios, with over 200 million internal daily calls. Users can create AI agents through Tencent Yuanqi platform, one-click distribute to QQ bots.
But compared to AI applications young people truly need (like learning assistance, creation tools), QQ's AI functions still seem conservative. Whether AI can be used to redefine social networking will be key to whether QQ can rise again.
Epilogue: Youth Epitaph in the Digital Archive
September 2023, An Autumn Evening
A netizen named "Ye Yu" opened his long-sealed QQ Zone. The page loaded slowly, background music autoplay—Linkin Park's "Numb," the song he set at age 14.
In the photo wall were 2007's non-mainstream selfies—45-degree upward angle shots, black-and-white filters, Martian Language signature "請罙噯這朶ㄝ孒." In the message board were classmates' Martian Language messages "踩踩," "回踩." In the diary were those declarations full of eighth-grader syndrome.
He watched and couldn't help laughing, then found his eyes a bit wet.
Someone commented: "Every generation has memories only peers understand. Only friends who experienced QQ Zone's golden period can appreciate the surprise when gray avatars lit up, when 'bang-bang-bang' knocking sounds played in headphones."
QQ is not just software, but a digital archive for 800 million Chinese netizens. Here lies:
The scarce glory of five-digit QQ numbers and digital mapping of social status
The secret language of crushes in "invisible to all except you" and emotional testing
The nationwide frenzy of midnight vegetable stealing and social experiments of virtual economy
The rise and fall history of Shamate families and grassroots youth's self-expression
The generational war of Martian Language and linguistic encryption resisting authority
Education anxiety in class groups and digital battlefields of home-school relations
Cultural export of emojis and generational understanding gaps
Unexpected transformation of pandemic online classes and digital education growing pains
These digital fragments connect us with our past selves, and also connect us with those who walked through youth together. They won't disappear with time, but quietly lie in servers, waiting to be reawakened someday.
History's irony lies in this: When we mock Shamate's "tackiness," we forget that was the only dignity for 200,000 grassroots youth in cold cities; when we criticize Martian Language for "destroying Chinese language," we forget that was a generation's resistance for privacy in monitored environments; when we complain QQ is "old, outdated," we forget it accompanied us through those irreplaceable youthful years.
In 2025, QQ is already 26 years old, older than many users. Its monthly active users are declining, its functions are being imitated and surpassed by other platforms, it may be becoming "tears of the era."
But on some midnight, when you open that sealed QQ Zone, see those immature words, exaggerated non-mainstream photos, Martian Language signatures, you'll suddenly realize:
Youth won't disappear, it's just compressed into strings of 0s and 1s, stored in some distant server.
Those gray avatars represent those friends drifting further away.
Those unread messages represent those words that couldn't be spoken.
Those deleted photos represent those memories you want to forget but can't.
QQ's significance never lay in how many monthly active users, how much revenue, how much market value.
Its significance lies in witnessing a generation's entire digital life from teenager to young adult, from young adult to middle age.
It's our digital youth, our second life, our deepest bond with this era.
When we look back at this history, perhaps we should say:
Thank you, QQ.
Thank you for remembering who we once were.
Di-di-di—that's the sound of an era.
References
National Arbitration Forum OICQ Domain Arbitration Verdict (March 21, 2000), National Arbitration Forum
Tencent QQ Show Product Proposal PPT (65 pages, 2002), Xu Liang
Tencent 2009 Q3 Financial Report, Tencent Holdings
Tencent 2024 Q4 Financial Report, Tencent Holdings
"QQ Group Management Standards," circulated online document
Guangdong Qingyuan Court QQ Group Administrator Criminal Verdict (2019), Guangdong Qingyuan Court
Guangzhou Internet Court Property Group Owner Civil Verdict (2020), Guangzhou Internet Court
Jiangsu Parent Group Exit Incident Report (2020), CCTV/People's Daily
Gansu Parent Kicked from Group Incident Report (2024), Media Reports
"Shamate I Love You" (Documentary, filmed 2017, premiered 2019), Li Yifan
"Tencent Biography," Wu Xiaobo
"Boiling Fifteen Years: China's Internet 1995-2009," Lin Jun
"First Intimate Contact," Pizi Cai (Cai Zhiheng)
Stanford University Online Dating Research Report (2020), Stanford University
Shenzhen Online Teaching Survey Report (5,103 questionnaires, 2020), Shenzhen Education Department
QuestMobile Post-00s User Active Penetration Data, QuestMobile
Zhihu "Smile Emoji" Interpretation Post, User "An Yong"
