Péi Qǐ 裴啟
Zì Róngqī 榮期. Fl. mid-4th c., active under Jìn Āidì 哀帝 (r. 361–365). Native of Hédōng Wénxǐ 河東聞喜 (modern Wénxǐ 聞喜, Shānxī) — the ancestral seat of the great Hédōng Péi 河東裴氏 clan, one of the leading aristocratic lineages of the Northern emigré society at Jiànkāng. Péi Qǐ is identified by the Suí shū jīngjí zhì as chǔshì 處士 (retired/private gentleman), i.e. he held no high office, and his lifedates are not preserved; he is presumed to have died after the public discredit of his book c. 363–365.
Péi Qǐ is the compiler of KR3l0135 Péizǐ yǔlín 裴子語林 — the work that founded the yǔlín / zhìrén 志人 anecdote-collection genre in 4th-c. Jiànkāng, and the immediate predecessor (and substantial source) for Liú Yìqìng 劉義慶’s Shìshuō xīnyǔ 世說新語. The work was composed in the Lónghé reign (362–363) and was at first highly fashionable in Jiànkāng literary circles; according to the Shìshuō xīnyǔ Qīngdǐ 輕詆 chapter and Liú Jùn’s 劉峻 commentary on it, Xiè Ān 謝安 publicly disowned the work upon discovering an apocryphal saying ascribed to himself, and the Yǔlín “fell from favour” (suì fèi 遂廢) — an unusual case of a book being destroyed by its subject’s public denunciation. The book nonetheless continued to circulate in marginal copies and survived in fragments into the Táng. The CBDB lists one entry for the name 裴啟 (id 656184) but with no dates or substantive biographical material — no confident CBDB id match.