Yan Zhen's novels focus on the spiritual plight of intellectuals. Once in World's End deals with the spiritual ebb and flow of contemporary Chinese intellectuals in a foreign cultural environment, while Water of the Canglang River is mainly about the mental situation the Chinese intellectuals who have traditional beliefs encounter when moral basis and people's sense of value face deconstruction in the market-oriented Chinese modernization transformation. Because of Women tells us mainly about the emotional plight and the destroying of value beliefs of the Chinese modern female intellectuals.