Yes he did. A lot of the first movie become canon material for the series later on, such as Liu and Kitana's relationship. I'm sure the origin of Shang's sorcery also qualifies, especially since he was a special servant of Kahn.

Well, this is a matter that always excites me... Shang's sorcery!

In MKC, a good explanation is made: Shang is a human who was taught the Chi controling techniques, and energy handling tricks by his master Cho. He was a pure and innocent man, who had only good intentions, and respected the powers he did not understood (althoguh he saught more..).

His "dark powers" consist in: soul stealing, portal opening ability, some black magic (not as deep as Quan Chi's), spirit handling, and some witchcraft.

But we see that he did not master any "dark power" before he met Shao Kahn. His evil personality, appeared when Kahn opened a world in front of him: the whole world of the dark sorcery that master Cho denied to teach him.

So, in MKC, Shang could not control black witchcraft before he met Kahn.
After he joined the emperor, he threw himself into darkness, by starting devouring souls, and studying the mysteries of occult dark magic.

In MK1, Goro states that Kahn taught the "dark powers" to Shang.
This can be the same story of MKC (MKC is a prequel to MK1, so the characters story can fit each other). These "dark powers" that Goro refer, can be the same that we see in MKC: soul stealing, portal control, etc.

And so, in MK1, we can assume that before Shang met Kahn, he already control some Chi techniques, like what he did in MKC.

In the games canon, we have little information about Shang's training, but i doubt it differs much from the data seen in MKC/MK1. In many games, we can see that Shang's origin is Earthrealm, though also is said he was original of Outworld, wich is not fake, since he became evil in Outworld, when he started working for Kahn, and mastered black magic. So, he kind of "re-borned" in Outworld, as an evil being.

Actually Shang being the protege of Khan was invented well before MK Conquest was ever produced. A good example are the MK2 pamphlets and the bios, endings. It is though unknown wether Tsung was a capable sorcerer before meeting Kahn or only after.

Shao kahn probably knows everything shang and Quan Chi knows and beyond.

But to answer your question, there is noo evidence whether or not Shang knew sorcery before he came across Shao Kahn in the games storyline.

As for the Movies Goro simply stated that Shang tsung learned the Black arts (meaning everything) from Kahn himself


As for MK Conquest that's a different matter. Master Cho taught Shang some unique abilities like seeing into someones soul and shooting a flameball. He alread knew some techniques but as someone here said earlier he wanted to explore more

(for those of you who don't know, MKC is the TV series Mortal Kombat Conquest, which tells the story of the great Kung Lao).