What is the difference between the new school of martial arts and the old school of martial arts?

In the study of modern martial arts novels, scholars usually take Liang Yusheng's "The Dragon and the Tiger in Beijing" published in the New Evening Post in 1954 as a watershed, and categorize martial arts novels into the new school and the old school of martial arts. Before Liang Yusheng's publication, the old school of wuxia was generally known as the old school of wuxia, which was represented by Zhao Huanting and Pingjiang Buxiaosheng of the southern school, as well as by the five great masters of the northern school (Yuzhu Louzhu, Bai Yu, Wang Dulu, Zheng Zhenyin, and Zhu Zhenmu), while the new school of wuxia after the 1950s was represented by the most renowned writers of the new school of wuxia, such as Liang Yusheng, Jinyong, and Gu Long.

In addition, the new school of wuxia is very different from the old school of wuxia in terms of content, concepts, and writing techniques. If you want to distinguish between the two, you can do so by looking at the following characteristics:

-Old school of wuxia-

Wuxia novels used to be very popular at the end of the Qing Dynasty, but during this period, they were not as popular as they used to be. The martial arts novels that came out during this period are categorized as the old school of martial arts, which had a profound influence on the development of martial arts novels in the later generations and had a pioneering and ground-breaking effect on the development of martial arts novels in the later generations. The old school of martial arts novels is characterized by the following features:

1 In terms of content, it mainly depicts revenge, elimination of violence and peace of mind, banditry and national struggle.

2 In the depiction of martial arts, or magical swordsmanship, or for the plain technique.

3 In terms of the novel technique, the basic use of chapter and verse novel format and historical depiction method.

4 Conceptually, it is mainly about the struggle between good and evil, showing that good is rewarded with good and evil with evil through the contradictory struggles between commoners and powerful people, chivalrous people and bullies, and clean officials and corrupt officials.

-New School of Wuxia-

After the 1950s, the new school of wuxia created a new pattern of wuxia novels, and brought the wuxia culture, which was gradually declining, to another peak. In fact, there is no complete separation between the new school and the old school. In the early days, the new school inherited a lot of the elements of the old school, but the new school broke through the old barriers and made it more modern and diversified, and it is also very different from the old school in terms of plotting and writing style:

1 It is connected to history without being bound by it, and it is fully open to the imagination.

2 Characterization of complex and multi-faceted characters.

3 The new school of martial arts novels are also written in the jianghu sects of the fight, the fight between good and evil, revenge, violence, national struggle is still the main content, but at the same time pay more attention to the depiction of the treasure hunting and exploration, love changes, the difficult process of learning the art and solving the mystery, and so on.

4 style absorbed a lot of modern literary techniques and skills, the language pursuit of simple, fluent, colloquial, complex plot structure, good use of multi-angle display, psychological description and reasoning skills.

5 The depiction of martial arts breaks through the traditional gateway views and "overstrike" stereotypes, and emphasizes on the competition of internal strength, pointing, hidden weapons, poison and mind, as far as possible, without using or less use of mysterious skills, wonderful style, but with "momentum" and a "fast" word to win, and to explore the inherent philosophical content of life in "martial arts".

The above is the difference between the old and new schools of martial arts. The type of wuxia you mentioned, which is similar to Fengyun, may not be applicable to the distinction between the new and old schools of wuxia (because there are also novels similar to the fantasy style of the old school), but I think it should be differentiated by the genres of wuxia novels. For example, Prof. Yip Hung-sang once categorized martial arts novels before the 1970s into the "Technique School", the "Super Technique School", the "Ghost School", the "New School", and the "Fantasy Immortal Chivalry School", etc., but such a categorization is no longer sufficient nowadays. With the evolution of the times, martial arts novels are now incorporating elements from many other fields, such as magic, cultivation, and endless time and space imaginations of the metaphysical martial arts genre, the existence of gods and monsters, fantasy, and destructive forces, which were not available before.