A website built for the xiaosan, a secret lover or mistress, came into the spotlight in late April when the media and experts questioned its existence due to moral reasons.

Liu Bin (not his real name), who agreed to talk under the condition of anonymity, runs the website by night. By day, he is an office worker in a Beijing-based IT company.

Liu, 23, founded the mistress website in March 2009 when he was a senior at Hebei-based Shijiazhuang Tiedao University. However, Liu has recently been unable to get access to the website.

Q: What's the idea behind launching a website for secret lovers?

A: I took a law course in the fourth year of college; the word xiaosan appealed to me when I was writing an assignment on property division in divorce. I searched the word on the Internet and found that this group is quite vast.

I used to despise these home wreckers, but after looking deep into it, I found many of them live in pain, with some fooled by men who hide their marriages. I got the idea to build a forum and get society to pay attention to the women and counsel them in the right way.

Q: Who are visitors to this site?

A: Visitors are mainly mistresses, wives and married men caught in relationship troubles. Of course there are also some "audiences" who would like to know what mistresses think about, and how to keep their own partner from affairs.

Q: Why did you choose .org for your website over .com or .cn?

A: I thought .org means public welfare organization, the characteristic of our site. All nine moderators use their spare time to maintain the forum for free.

Q: How do you classify mistresses?

A: I would divide them to four types: A, a woman competing with the girlfriend of a guy who is not yet married; B, a woman who doesn't know the man is married because he hides it from her; C, a woman who stays with a man for monetary reasons, knowing he is married; D, a woman in love with this man.

Q: What's your personal attitude to them?

A: I have different attitudes toward different types of mistresses. I hate those who break other people's homes for their benefit. But I believe most mistresses are also victims: they just didn't meet the right guy at the right time and we have to persuade them to let go and start a new life.

Q: Do you think the website will encourage the power of secret lovers?

A: We have posters who give advice on how to keep your husband from having an affair, and how to deal with a mistress. We are not trying to make xiaosan acceptable; we always persuade them to stay away from married men. We want the public to observe them objectively and to guide them out of immoral love.

Q: The slogan of your site is "pay attention to secret lovers and build up harmonious families". Don't you think it's ironic?

A: Not at all. That's what we do exactly. We have helped many people get out of the shadows and persuaded some to give up thoughts of self-mutilation and revenge.

On the contrary I think some people are quite ironic; they label themselves objective and moral, but their way of looking at problem is to be "selectively blind" and deliberately exaggerate negative influences and ignore positive ones.

Q: Are married men coming to this forum to look for lovers?

A: I don't want to answer this question. If you really understand what a mistress is, you won't raise this question.

Q: Some posters in the forum are very sharp. Are they real or did you hire people to post them to earn attention for the website?

A: We have no money and don't need to hire people for a clicks ratio. Besides, our website has been around for a year and no one paid attention to us before April. We are not, and don't want to, create sensation.

Q: Are you earning money from it?

A: I don't know what's wrong with society. No matter what you do, you start being questioned from a bunch of people, wanting to know how much money you've earned.

Since its establishment through April 30, our ad income has been 538 yuan in total; the cost for the server and domains is almost 400 yuan. After we received media attention in late April, the flow went up and from May 1-21, the ad income was 496.2 yuan.

Q: How does this website affect you?

A: I work in e-business. My income depends on sales and my work time is flexible. That's helped in maintaining the forum.

The numbers of visitors has increased tremendously after the media coverage. Some who have joined the forum have caused trouble for us; it takes me six hours a day just to manage the forum. I'm really thankful to the nine moderators; they have been working on the forum without asking for any reward.

Q: Do your friends know about this site?

A: Most of them don't know. A good friend didn't understand me when he first learned about this forum, thinking I wanted to look for a lover. But looking deeper into it, he realized what I was doing and now helps me manage the forum when he has time.