Abstract. We present a systematic way to construct solutions of the (n = 5)-reduction of the BKP and CKP hierarchies from the general τ function τ (n+k) of the KP hierarchy. We obtain the one-soliton, two-soliton, and periodic solution for the bi-directional Sawada-Kotera (bSK), the bi-directional Kaup-Kupershmidt (bKK) and also the bi-directional Satsuma-Hirota (bSH) equation. Different solutions such as left-and right-going solitons are classified according to the symmetries of the 5th roots of e iε . Furthermore, we show that the soliton solutions of the nreduction of the BKP and CKP hierarchies with n = 2j + 1, j = 1, 2, 3, . . ., can propagate along j directions in the 1 + 1 space-time domain. Each such direction corresponds to one symmetric distribution of the nth roots of e iε . Based on this classification, we detail the existence of two-peak solitons of the n-reduction from the Grammian τ function of the sub-hierarchies BKP and CKP. If n is even, we again find two-peak solitons. Last, we obtain the "stationary" soliton for the higher-order KP hierarchy.