At a 24-hour coffee shop in Beijing's Haidian district, private tutor Ming Tian was explaining a math question to students. A few blocks away in a 20-story building housing scores of after-school tutoring facilities, classrooms and offices were empty.
Huang Zhengxin, the father of a daughter in middle school and a son in elementary school, was anxiously looking for alternative summer tutoring channels for his children. Meanwhile, Sun Ke, a veteran employee of an online education company, had just lost his job.
