Cáo Pí 曹毗
Eastern Jìn literatus, poet and fù-writer, zì Fǔzuǒ 輔佐. Native of Qiáoguó 譙國 Qiáoxiàn 譙縣 (modern Bózhōu 亳州, Ānhuī), descendant of the CáoWèi imperial clan. Active roughly mid-4th c., a contemporary of Yú Yì 庾翼, Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之 and Sūn Chuò 孫綽; biographical entry in Jìn shū 晉書 92 (Wényuàn zhuàn).
Important note on the name. Cáo Pí 曹毗 (Eastern Jìn, bì) is a wholly distinct person from the much more famous Cáo Pī 曹丕 (187–226, pī, Wèi Wéndì 魏文帝, founder of the Wèi dynasty and compiler of the Diǎnlùn 典論). The two names differ in the lower component (bǐ 比 + máo 毛 vs. plain bù 不) and in tone; they should never be conflated. Pre-modern catalog meta and modern reference works alike often print Cáo Pí 曹毗’s name as homograph-error for Cáo Pī 曹丕.
Career: rose through Jiànkāng court offices to Zhèngfǔ 鎮府 staff under Yú Yì in Wǔchāng (340s); served as Lǐbù láng 吏部郎 and ended as Guānglù xūn 光祿勳 / Tàicháng 太常 (the latter according to some catalog notices). Major surviving literary works are anthologized in Quán Jìn wén 全晉文 (Yán Kějūn ed.) and Quán Jìn shī: notably the Yángdū fù 揚都賦 (a fù on Jiànkāng), the Dù Lánxiāng zhuàn 杜蘭香傳 (a Daoist-flavoured shénxiān / immortal-bride narrative about the goddess Dù Lánxiāng’s descent to marry the mortal Zhāng Shuò 張碩 — preserved in Tàipíng yùlǎn and elsewhere), the Mǎ ruì fù 馬瑞賦, and various ritual zàn. He compiled a zhìguài 志怪 anomaly-account collection known simply as Cáo Pí zhìguài 曹毗志怪 (KR3l0144), surviving only as Lǔ Xùn’s reconstruction in Gǔ xiǎoshuō gōuchén 古小說鉤沈.
Cáo Pí’s place in literary history is principally as one of the secondary fù-writers and zhìguài-compilers of the Eastern-Jìn WángYǔ generation, and as the originator of the Dù Lánxiāng immortal-bride topos that shapes much later Daoist hagiography and Táng chuánqí. CBDB has no entry under this exact head; the Sòng-period CBDB primarily covers post-Táng figures.