Biography | 任正非 Ren Zhengfei — Born in Zhenning County, Not at the Waterfall Tourists Photograph

The story people tell starts at Huawei's gates in Shenzhen. Ren Zhengfei was born on 25 October 1944 in Zhenning County, Guizhou, then still recorded as part of the Republic of China. The family house is not a public pin. His parents were schoolteachers. His father, Ren Musheng, courtesy name Moxun, later became president of Duyun No. 1 Middle School. His mother was Cheng Yuanzhao. The grandfather, Ren Sanhe, had been a ham-curing chef from Rendian Village in Pujiang County, Zhejiang. The son's registered ancestral place stayed Zhejiang even though the birth was in the Guizhou hills. Zhenning is the county whose name tourists now attach to Huangguoshu Waterfall, a few kilometres southwest of the county seat. That waterfall is the photographable public face of the county. It is not the room where he was born. He spent primary and middle-school years in a remote mountain town in this prefecture. In 1960 Guizhou was in famine. The later company myth that treats Shenzhen as origin skips the county that actually issued the birth. A visitor today can stand in Zhenning's county seat, or at the waterfall the county is known for. Neither is a childhood museum. Photo: Huangdan2060, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Huangguoshu Waterfall in Zhenning County, October 2020. The waterfall is the county landmark, not the birth house.