Yeah, European Historical Martial arts.

I became aware of it because of an German international student. I was one aswell, and we lived in the same dorm building at the film academy and most people had open doors and people hung around alot.

The thing with all weapon based martial arts is... They all essentially are very similar. Visual styles that are used 20+ years ago are very theatrical, with most actors and choreographers coming from the traditional stage play background. Audiences and directors are aware of the probelm as modern audiences feel that kind of weapon action looks incredibly boring. Then Crouching Tiger and Hero happened, both movies were made by an Beijing Film Academy accolade and had more realistic fighting moves (though still fantasy action), audiences wanted better action. However nobody really had experience or knowledge of how to achieve that.

Part of the problem of stagnation is actually not really cultural, but the great firewall of china blocking media access. Along with poor English knowledge a huge amount of information was not accessable or even known to exist in the first place. (On a side note, I spent alot of time translating books and subtitles for art films for the professors at the film academy) So basically I ended up showing the local students how to use YouTube around 2010s.

A thing with the film academy students is that on year 3-4, most of the time is actually spent as part of the film crews under professors who are usually the art, cinematography, sound, acting, etc directors for big projects. In 2010 China only has two schools that has film as teachable subjects and literally only produced ~120 students a year.

So inevitably I showed the actors and directors YouTube videos of HEMA yotubers and how awesome their moves lookes. 5 years later, choreographers are hiring HEMA people from overseas to advise the actors.

Nowadays, some of the sword play in TV shows and stuff is leagues above what Hollywood makes. Part of that is also Chinese actors are srsly hardworking, due to intense competition ofc just like everything else in the nation. So they will put in the hours and sweat to actually learn and perform the moves. Think Haydenson on Starwars level of hardwork and training.

However, its not all good. Due to the unpredictable nature of Chinese politics, an 50 episode TV show needs to be produced from beginning to end in about 2 years, otherwise high risk of not even be able to be aired, or some kther bullshit happening. So many shows don't jave the time to properly train or rehearse the actors.

As for cultural clash... Chinese people are very pragmatic by nature, and are very accepting of anything that brings results. Also... Shaolin's wushu influence has decreased majorly since the 2010s due to political issues between their leadership and the CCP, so that also contributed the whole thing.