Abstract: When discussing the path of inheritance and change of Chinese folklore in recent decades,the folklorists have proposed these theories:the adaptation theory,the revival/continuation theory,and the revolutionary theory.All these three theories constructed their analysis frames from the two dimensions:folklore matters and diachronic changes,which brought them to the field of history study.But these three theories cannot explain the conformation of the “new folklore” in the internet era with the “old tradition” from the Ming and Qing dynasties.In addition to these three analysis frameworks,this paper proposes a new perspective of structural analysis,from which,we can find the high similarities between the DT model in the internet economy and the guild hall in old Beijing,as well as the similarities between “dianping.com”and “gathered products in capital” documented in the Records of Seasonal Grandness in Imperial Capital (Didu Suishi Jisheng《帝都岁时纪胜》),especially in their internal mechanism.As cultural representations,these similarities come from the concordance of urban daily life in different period but always base on the high division of labor and the consumer society.These similarities are not the result of adaptation,revival/continuation or revolution of a certain kind of folklore,but a natural choice decided by the Self-Healing Mechanism of folklore,which result in the recurrence of different folklore matters with consistent structures.This is the fourth explanation of the path of inherence and change of folklore:self-healing theory.

Key words: self-healing mechanism of culture, the practice of daily life, inherence and change of folklore