According to the old news link I've post here, untile July 13, 2001,
beijing.com was still held by ex-owner who wanted to put it
on an auction to wait for the result of Olympic committee to
vote the host city of 2008.(And result goes to beijing, it means
the value of beijing.com would skyrocket high, could anybody ignore this fact and let it expired few days later?)
And also according to the current whois of beijing.com shows, the owner
is ultsearch.com and creation date was Aug 5, 2001.
From July 13, 2001 to Aug 5, 2001, less than 23 days, was that possible the ex-owner "forgot" to renew the name and let it dropped and
as soon as possible it had been deleted to be snapped by
ultsearch.com? And ex-owner had also just forgotten they had hold
this 1 million dollars name for auction and let it gone?
I think it doesn't matter what registrar ultsearch.com is using
for now, it could transfer the registrar later.
Though I have no direct evidence to prove it was a real transaction , I do believe it was not a dropped and snapped domain but a normal business.
It is just my logical thought, not necessary the TRUTH