Near the end of the Qing Dynasty anarchism began to hold sway over Chinese intellectuals , and their enthusiasm for it lingered on throughout the early Republican years . Did anarchist ideas such as anti-institutionalism , women's liberation , free love , and the utopian vision of a society characterized by freedom and equality leave any decisive marks on the form and content of May ? Fourth literature ? Starting from this perspective , I use Ba Jin's Turbulent Stream , A Trilogy（激流三部曲，1931） as an example to see how this work might have reflected the writer's anarchist tendency . Does it leave any traces in the characterization , plot , and formal aspects of the trilogy ? The main characteristics of Turbulent Stream include symbolic personalities , the juxtaposition between good and evil , a narrator with a biased stance , didactic language , the awakening of the consciousness of the repressed classes （especially women） , the hatred of the present world , and the yearning for a better society .These features can help us understand better the utopianism in May Fourth literature . To see how Turbulent Stream may have reflected Ba Jin's anarchist utopianism , I compare it with the classics of anarchism such as Kropotkin's works , the famous play Am Vorabend（1907）, and Emma Goldman's articles on women's liberation . The end of my study discusses why Turbulent Stream has been considered "non-realistic" by critics insisting on the realistic reading of May Fourth literature . The main reason is that instead of objectively representing the present world , works like Turbulent Stream criticize it from the writers' subjective viewpoints . And Marxist critics' relentless criticism of Turbulent Stream reveals that the spirit of freedom and equality expressed by the work is a strong threat to Marxism .