Although post-mortem apotheosis and secular honor in temples have received more attention,shrines to living men were also ordinary institutions from Han times onwards in Chinese history.Previous scholarship so far on pre-mortem shrines in Tang and Song relates them to pre-mortem commemoration in inscribed records of local commendation on the one hand and Neo-Confucian Daoxue Shrines to Local Worthies on the other.That scholarly work suggests that Tang and Song premortem shrines when political were basically elite institutions;and that when common people were involved their motivations were religious rather than political.In Ming times,by contrast,premortem shrines were normatively established by commoners and constituted a venue for popular political participation,while the steles commemorating the shrines explicitly argued that non-elite people had the right to political speech.This article speculates,as a hypothesis awaiting further research,that both Yuan modes of government generally,and creative uses of premortem enshrinement in Yuan times specifically,may have contributed to Ming populism.