[6] Krist wrote that the use of Raise the Red Lantern by other editions was "presumably to ride on the movie's popularity".

[8] Excerpts of the English-language translation were included in the 2016 anthology The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature.

[10] The French version, under the title Épouses et concubines, was translated by Annie Au Yeung and Françoise Lemoine, and published by Groupe Flammarion in 1992.

[12] Later editions in French are a part of the imprint Le Livre de Poche of the publisher Hachette.

[12] The Dutch translation, De rode lantaarn, published by Uitgeverij Contact [nl], was released in 1994.

[16] The Japanese version, using the Wives and Concubines title (妻妾成群), was translated by Takumasa Senno (千野拓政 Senno Takumasa); this was included in Volume 1, Issue 20 of Quarterly Modern Novels of China (季刊中国現代小説), January 1992,[17] published by Sososha (蒼蒼社).

[19] The Swedish version, titled Den röda lyktan: två berättelser från Kina, was translated by Anna Gustafsson Chen and published in 1993 by Bokförlaget Tranan [sv].

That night, Chen Zuoqian admits that he was the one who stole and burned her flute because he was afraid it was a lover's token.

Joy interrupts the flute lesson, however, and Young Master Gu leaves because the mood is destroyed by Feipu's absence.

Lotus finds a drawing of her on a piece of soiled toilet paper and confronts Swallow with it.

In a fit of anger, Lotus tells her to eat the toilet paper or be forced out of the Chen household.

[8] The novel was also adapted by the Thai writer Taitao Sucharitkul as "Mong-Kut-Dok-som [th]" (มงกุฎดอกส้ม), which means "the crown with orange flowers".

[citation needed] Gary Krist of The New York Times wrote that the novel is "a subtle, profoundly feminist tale that nonetheless has all the gamy melodrama of pulp entertainment".

[8] Kirkus Reviews wrote that the English translation has "distinctive prose searingly describes men and women brutally shaped by their time and place".

[25] Publishers Weekly, which states that the "prose is sometimes dense with long, twisted sentences", concluded that the work "leaves the reader chilled".

Additionally, the reader stated that sometimes the translation did not display "nuances of Su Tong's creative use of Chinese.

[11] Friederike Freier of Die Tageszeitung criticized the German version for using a title other than that of the Chinese original and for being "holprig bis zur Schmerzgrenze".