Continued Jin Ping Mei

Ding Yaokang (1599~1669), whose courtesy name was Xisheng and whose nickname was Yehe, called himself Ziyang Taoist and Muji Taoist, and he was a native of Zhucheng, Shandong. A novelist in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, he was the son of Ding Weining, the deputy envoy of the Xunxiang Army in Huguang. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, he was a candidate for the Imperial Academy. He took part in the provincial examination many times and was always ranked second in the list. At the age of twenty, he became a scholar, traveled south of the Yangtze River, and studied under Dong Qichang's family. In the fourth year of Shunzhi, he entered the capital and served as a tutor with a white flag. He was appreciated by the ministers and became famous. The imperial court successively served as the magistrate of Rongcheng and the magistrate of Hui'an County. He did not take up the post because his mother was old. In the twelfth lunar month of the eighth year of Kangxi's reign (1669), he died of illness at home at the age of seventy-one. He was the author of "Continuing the Plum in the Golden Vase", "History of Heaven", "Add and Deletion of Divination", etc.