Reported by NUPIAO News | Song Jianan
On August 2, the Douyin account “Beautiful Tomorrow” (Meili Mingtian), launched by former East Buy CEO Sun Dongxu alongside two of the platform’s former star hosts, Ming Ming (Shi Ming) and Tian Quan (Guo Tianquan), held its debut livestream. Within just 30 minutes of going live, concurrent online viewers surpassed 100,000, with real-time engagement soaring past 7 million—rocketing the stream to the #1 spot on Douyin’s overall sales ranking. At the same time, the well-established “With Yu Hui Tong Xing” account, which has been operating for over a year, sat at #5, its buzz clearly eclipsed by the newcomer’s explosive debut.
According to data tracked by the Chanmama analytics platform, the livestream ran from 8 AM to 1 PM—a solid five-hour marathon—amassing a staggering 14.547 million total views. The account gained over 300,000 new followers during the broadcast, pushing its total follower count to 947,000 by the time the stream wrapped.
The account listed over 100 products in total, with core categories spanning grains, cooking oils, fresh produce, snacks, and household cleaning essentials. Several snack and agricultural product items individually racked up over 100,000 yuan in sales, and the overall estimated transaction volume for the entire stream blew past the 10 million yuan mark. That kind of performance puts it on par with what both East Buy and With Yu Hui Tong Xing pulled in on the same day.
That said, compared to East Buy and With Yu Hui Tong Xing—the two giants where these three founders used to work—Beautiful Tomorrow is still very much in its infancy. There’s a massive gap in both follower base and brand influence. As of August 2, With Yu Hui Tong Xing boasted 39.104 million followers on Douyin, while East Buy’s main account had 28.353 million.
Tianyancha records show that Beautiful Tomorrow (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., which completed its business registration on July 10, has a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Sun Dongxu invested 3.4 million yuan for a 34% stake and serves as the company’s legal representative, general manager, and financial officer. Ming Ming and Tian Quan each put in 3.3 million yuan, holding 33% stakes respectively. The ownership structure is nearly evenly split, with no single controlling shareholder.
The company name cleverly weaves in each founder’s personal identity: “Beautiful” (Meili) comes from the nickname fans gave Sun Dongxu—”Sun Beautiful”—while “Tomorrow” (Mingtian) pulls one character from each of Ming Ming’s and Tian Quan’s names.
When the Beautiful Tomorrow account was first registered on July 13, the trio dropped a joint announcement video. Within two hours of posting, the account gained over 80,000 followers; by day three, it had blown past 330,000 followers, effectively stockpiling a solid base of traffic ahead of the debut stream.
All three have deep ties to East Buy. Sun Dongxu officially stepped down from all management roles at East Buy in November 2025, with the primary trigger being internal management conflicts stemming from the now-infamous “little essay incident.”
When Sun resigned, Yu Minhong publicly stated at the time, “Dongxu and I are the founders of East Buy. Without Dongxu’s hard work and relentless perseverance, there would be no East Buy’s development or its present-day success.” Yu added that he and Sun had maintained good communication with no friction or barriers between them.
Meanwhile, Ming Ming, Tian Quan, and two other anchors, Zhong Can and Lin Lin, simultaneously announced their departures on April 25, 2026. Ming Ming and Tian Quan were original members of East Buy’s first-generation “F4” anchor lineup. At the time of their exit, Ming Ming had 1.3 million personal followers on Douyin, while Tian Quan, as a founding-era anchor, boasted nearly 500,000 private-domain followers.
The core reason behind these anchor departures points to operational adjustments following a change in platform management. After East Buy replaced its executive president, the company pushed through a strict top-down control reform—compressing prime-time slots for veteran anchors, overhauling performance metrics and revenue-sharing rules, and pivoting entirely toward a self-operated product-driven model that downplayed its signature humanistic livestream content.
Addressing the mass exodus of core anchors, Yu Minhong publicly apologized for the disruption these personnel changes caused to users, fans, and the team. He described the four anchors as outstanding employees who had grown alongside the platform, adding that their departure was a real loss.
After Beautiful Tomorrow was established, Yu Minhong again weighed in publicly: “After these veteran employees left, they naturally needed to make a living. And they only know two tracks well: one is the education and training industry, and the other is livestream e-commerce for agricultural products. Both of these tracks were originally blazed by me and New Oriental step by step.”
He also pointed out that New Oriental, aside from core sensitive positions, essentially doesn’t impose non-compete agreements—meaning employees can legally jump into the same line of business the very next day after leaving.
According to Yu, over the past three decades, New Oriental’s education business has seen over a thousand practitioners walk through its doors and move on. Many went on to found their own companies, some even achieving public listings—yet New Oriental itself never collapsed and continues to grow steadily. He also extended his best wishes, sincerely hoping Sun Dongxu, Ming Ming, and Tian Quan find success in their new venture.
Right now, East Buy, With Yu Hui Tong Xing, and Beautiful Tomorrow are clearly locked in as competitors. East Buy, with its mature self-operated supply chain and offline store network, is pursuing a comprehensive platform strategy—deliberately downplaying individual anchor star power in favor of a de-headlining approach. With Yu Hui Tong Xing is tightly bound to Dong Yuhui’s personal cultural IP, juggling books, cultural tourism, and premium agricultural products while frequently partnering with regional tourism boards—giving it strong cross-sector reach. Beautiful Tomorrow, for now, draws its audience primarily from East Buy’s veteran viewers and the three anchors’ existing private-domain fan bases, making its circle relatively narrow. It focuses on affordable everyday necessities while preserving the slow-paced, knowledge-driven commentary style.
Industry analysts suggest that Beautiful Tomorrow’s debut buzz outpacing With Yu Hui Tong Xing comes down to a combination of factors: Sun Dongxu’s name recognition as East Buy’s original operator, the years of private-domain fandom that Ming Ming and Tian Quan have cultivated, and the built-in media narrative of three founders leaving en masse to start their own thing. Short-term nostalgia-driven traffic can spike rankings quickly, but the real moats in this game—traffic conversion, user retention, and supply chain muscle—are what matter for the long haul.
Whether Beautiful Tomorrow can sustain its debut momentum and truly grow into a credible “third pole” that can go toe-to-toe with the two heavyweight accounts remains a question only time and the market can answer.
