In the last two to three decades, Chinese folkloristics has seen some remarkable development. The development can be confirmed not only in the scale of academic accomplishment, but also in the richness of its contents and the depth of theoretical discussions. One of the theories and methodologies that had a great impact on such development is the performance theory. Performance theory which arose between the late 1960s and the 1970s in the US had a tremendous influence in the academia from the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s, which still continues to exercise its influence in diverse academic fields throughout the world to this day. It affected a wide variety of research areas encompassing ethnography, anthropology, folkloristics, linguistics, literary criticism, religious studies, area studies, music, drama, mass media, and the like, whose representative theoreticians include Dell Hymes, Richard Bauman, Roger Abrahams, and Dan Ben-Amos. Among them, one who had the biggest influence in the field of folkloristics is Richard Bauman. His article, "Verbal Art as Performance" is a major achievement in the performance theory, one that gets most frequently cited even today. The performance theory which made its way into Chinese folkloristics also centers around Bauman`s discussion. Performance theory began to change the course of Chinese folkloristics from late 1990s, and starting from the 2000s, Bauman`s works got translated into Chinese by Yang Lihui and An Deming. Since then, numerous articles related to the theory have been published in China, which made "performance" as a key word become the central and most popular concept in Chinese folkloristics. This paper overviews and investigates the change and upheaval in Chinese folkloristics and mythology brought on by Richard Bauman`s performance theory from late 1990s to date, through which the vision of their development would be examined.