Earlier I tried to find out who the past owners of the domain I currently use were, curious about what they had used it for. Following up on “The Story of My Domain: Digging Through Its Past and Present,” I continue to explore who those past owners were.
Tracing renfei.net Back to 2005
In my previous article I traced back to 2010, which I thought was the domain’s first owner, but I’ve now traced it back to 2005, and I even found a preserved snapshot of his then-webpage. Let’s take a look. First, the homepage looked like this:
Then I chose the English version, since the Chinese one had nothing. It was a profile: he is also called RenFei, a PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science (CHEMS) at Michigan State University (MSU). He lived in Shanxi until age 12, then went to Beijing and attended Beijing Huiwen High School, later was admitted to Tsinghua University, and in 2002 went to Michigan State University — a PhD student, probably born in the 1980s, and a straight-A student.
renfei.net from Shandong University of Technology in 2010
Then in 2010 it was registered by Ren Fei (renfei****@163.com) of Zibo, Shandong, at Shandong University of Technology. I also checked the webpage history of the time and found it was reverse-proxying Baidu’s homepage — looks like an IT guy. The webpage screenshot at the time is below:
Registered by lidesheng after 2013
In 2013 it was registered by lidesheng and held until 2018 when the registration lapsed. After 2019 it was acquired by me. Based on the webpage history at the time, this “lidesheng” was probably a domain speculator who specialized in reselling domains, listing it on a domain marketplace, but it seems no one ever bought it, so eventually the registration lapsed and it came to me. Below are the 2013 and 2014 webpage history screenshots:
In My Hands after 2019
After it came to me, there’s no need to say more — it’s the current site, and I’ll keep renewing it. There won’t be a next owner.