Dīng Yàokàng 丁耀亢 (1599–1669), courtesy names and hào including Yěhè 野鶴, Mùjī Dàorén 木雞道人, and Zǐyáng Dàorén 紫陽道人, was a native of Zhūchéng 諸城 in Shāndōng province, one of the most versatile literati of the early Qīng dynasty. CBDB (id 70713) records his dates as 1599–1669 as the “standard opinion” (通說), while noting that scholars have proposed a range of alternatives (see CBDB notes citing Kē Yùchūn 柯愈春, Wénxiàn 1996.4). The 1599–1669 dates are followed here.
He was a jǔrén 舉人 who served in minor Qīng official positions but spent most of his career as a professional man of letters. He was caught up in the Zhuāng Tínglóng 莊廷鑨 literary inquisition of 1661 (the 明史案 or Míngshǐ àn), during which several scholars were executed for composing a private history of the Ming. Dīng was tangentially implicated, arrested, and imprisoned, though he was eventually released; the trauma of this episode marked his later writing.
His major prose work is Xù Jīnpíngméi 續金瓶梅 (KR4k0218), a 64-chapter Buddhist-inflected sequel to the Ming novel Jīnpíngméi, composed ca. 1660–1665 and subsequently suppressed multiple times by Qīng censors. He also wrote the drama Chìsōng Yuán 赤松園 and a substantial body of poetry. His Confucian-Buddhist moralism, combined with a frank engagement with erotic themes, reflects the intellectual tensions of the Ming-Qīng transition among the Shāndōng literary elite.