The Lady in the Painting is the only full-length story written in Chinese for low-intermediate level learners of Chinese as a foreign language. The story is told with vocabulary and structures familiar to students who have completed a basic course in Chinese. Using an inventory of only about 300 Chinese characters, it serves as an excellent transition between the short reading passages that students encounter in a basic level Chinese course and the longer and more demanding passages in subsequent levels.

The original edition of the story has been widely used for decades as a supplementary reader in Chinese language classes in the United States.