What's the difference between Chess King and other youth novels about knowledge?

First of all, we should understand the novel Chess King. Chess King is Zhong Acheng's first novel, which can also be said to be his famous work. Zhong Acheng is a representative figure of root-seeking literature. Simple and realistic brushwork, focusing on meaning, acting with emotion and condensing with spirit, is the main style of Acheng's novels. Acheng's indifferent and calm personality made him almost stop writing literature after the Three Kings, which led him to fade out of the altar, and few people knew it.

A Cheng's Chess King has always been regarded as a masterpiece of root-seeking literature. This novella with the theme of "educated youth" life focuses more on finding the ideal spirit in traditional culture. The novel takes a group of "educated youth" who go to the border of Yunnan to "go to the countryside" as the protagonist, and outlines their life experiences in an unusual environment. The protagonist Wang Yisheng is one of them. He is weak by nature. Facing the rough and noisy social environment, his only "determination" can only come from his inner spiritual balance. This is a typical "hidden in the city" person: neither far away from secular life nor addicted to secular environment. In the works, political events and social contradictions are diluted. "The life of educated youth" and "the background of the Cultural Revolution" may not be the whole environment and basis for the characters' survival and activities in the novel, but the Taoist thought in China's traditional culture has indeed influenced Wang Yisheng's life and even his spiritual world: the "transcendental realm" in Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi's philosophy of being indifferent to tranquility, doing nothing, staying in the secular world and not being ashamed of the secular world may be Wang Yisheng's dream of life.