The four wives of the Chen family live in four courtyards respectively. Whenever a red lantern is hung high in a wife's house, the owner Qiao Zuoqian will live in that courtyard that night.

The four wives all wanted to be favored by the master, so many stories of jealousy and right and wrong happened in the Qiao residence.

The eldest lady is so fat that she seems to be a hundred years old in Songlian's eyes. The second wife talks sweetly and has a bodhisattva face, but behind her back she smiles with a knife and a scorpion heart.

The third wife was once a famous actress in the theater troupe, with a handsome appearance and a tricky temperament. Later, she had an affair with Mr. Gao, a doctor in Qiao Mansion. The second wife reported her and was killed in a small room on the balcony.

Songlian complained that she was squeezed out by the previous wives when she first arrived. She, who was not experienced in the world, wanted to fake a pregnancy to win the favor of her master. Not wanting this to be discovered by Yan'er, the maid who fantasized about being the wife of the Qiao family, she told the second wife. When Qiao Zuoqian learned that Songlian was not pregnant, he ordered the lights to be turned off.

Songlian, who lost her favor, finally understood that "people are nothing in this courtyard: they are like dogs, cats, and mice, but they are not like human beings." Songlian went crazy. She went crazy under the various schemes of the Qiao family.

The next year, Qiao Mansion married a fifth wife.