Career
Was a Yuan 元 period writer of Chinese Sanqu poetry. He was also a noted calligrapher and landscape artist. Unfortunately, although a prolific poet, most of his writings have been lost.
The surviving sanqu poems of the poet are all written to the same musical mode and song title.
However the content of the poems suggests they were written at different times. Shang Ting was from Shandong 山東 Province.
Shang and his entire family were on familiar terms with the poet and statesman Yuan Haowen 元好問 (1190–1257). Shang Ting served the Mongol monarch Kublai before he took the throne.
Later there followed an array of official appointments.
When the Yuan Dynasty 元 was officially founded in 1271, Shang was appointed Assistant Administrator in the Secretariat. In later life he was implicated in a wrongful death case and was imprisoned twice. He was later found innocent, but never again took an official position.
He died at age eighty and many posthumous titles followed.
