Abstract: By contrasting the content of a ballad , proclaiming the“White Louts”Revolt in Shandong province during the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty , with the standard history of the period , this article identifies the existence of“folk time”that was different from“imperial time ,”and demonstrates how imperial ideology permeated and molded the folk world.The author concludes that folk time was elastic and different from the persistent imperial time.Imperial ideology infiltrated into and molding the folk world and through the use of its defining concepts it indoctrinated the folk world.