Duàn Wéiqīng 段維清
Nephew of 段昌武 (Duàn Chāngwǔ). Fl. 1248. Independent biographical traces are essentially nil; he survives through a single document preserved as a preface to his late uncle’s Cóngguì máoshī jíjiě (KR1c0022).
At the time of writing (Chúnyòu 淳祐 8 = 1248), Wéiqīng held the office of díɡōng láng 迪功郎 (a low-ranking 從九品 court title) and was newly appointed xiàn chéng 縣丞 (vice-magistrate) of Huìchāng 會昌 county in Gànzhōu 贛州. His petition (Qǐng jǐjù zhuàng 請給據狀), submitted to the central Imperial Directorate of Education (國子監), requests a certificate (jù 據) prohibiting other booksellers in the LiǎngZhè 兩浙 and Fújiàn 福建 circuits from re-cutting his uncle’s work — citing both his family’s printing partner Luó Yuè 羅樾 (a cáogòng 漕貢 “transport-tribute” provincial graduate of the same Jiāngxī region) and the integrity of his uncle’s reputation as a Shī master. The Ministry-level reply granting the certificate is preserved with the petition.
The petition is among the two or three most-cited extant Sòng documents recording an explicit, formal claim to what amounts to a printing privilege, and is a foundational piece of evidence in the historiography of Chinese book-piracy and early printing privilege (see e.g. Nianhua Feng, Copyright Protection in Song China (960–1279), MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 2007).