Táo Gǔ 陶穀 (903–970), zì Xiùshí 秀實. Native of Bīnzhōu Xīnpíng 邠州新平 (modern Shǎnxī Bīnxiàn). Originally surnamed Táng 唐 — grandson of the late-Táng poet Táng Yànqiān 唐彥謙 — but the family changed the surname to Táo 陶 to avoid the tabu on the personal name of the HòuJìn (Later Jìn) founder Shí Jìngtáng 石敬瑭 (whose name shares the Táng syllable 唐 = 瑭 in tabu-substitution).
A four-dynasty office-holder of the Five Dynasties — Sòng transition: under the HòuJìn he served as Zhīzhìgào, Cāngbù lángzhōng; under the HòuHàn as Jǐshìzhōng; under the HòuZhōu as Bīngbù shìláng, Hànlín chéngzhǐ. Entered the founding Sòng court keeping the same Hànlín office and adding Hùbù shàngshū. CBDB id 25185 gives lifedates 903–970 firm, with active years 939–964. Sòngshǐ 269 records his official biography. The personal-name change is recorded in CBDB notes (citing the CBD reference) and in the Sòngshǐ itself.
Táo Gǔ is the author of KR3l0127 Qīngyì lù 清異錄 (2 juàn WYG), a celebrated and widely-cited early-Sòng biji miscellany of late-Táng and Five-Dynasties novel terms and expressions; the work is the source for hundreds of culinary, technological, and material-culture vocabulary items that entered the Sòng-and-later literary lexicon. He is also credited with the Wǔ Zōngjí (now lost) and Sìzàn jí 賜讚集.
The Sìkù tíyào discusses the question — first raised by Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí — whether the Qīngyì lù was actually composed by Táo Gǔ or by a later forger using his name; the editors concluded, with Hú Yīnglín, that “though Táo entered the Sòng he was a Five-Dynasties man, and the literary register of the period was just like this” — and that the work is genuine, with perhaps minor interpolations from elsewhere.