Just saw this installment of your novel. Interesting writing.
Although the novel is not about pedagogy, it does expend quite a bit of lines on it. So it would not be too out of the left field for me to make a comment regarding Jing's way of teaching, specifically of mathematics.
From the description of her tutoring Danny on the calculation of a triangular area and the related construction of the height of a triangle with an obtuse angle, I can see the pedagogy of her choice is rote memorization, typical of Chinese educational system. It may show result in the short run on tests, but it makes long lasting damage to the imagination and creativity of a chid, especially if the child is bright.
One possible way --- there are enumerable good ways -- to teach, say, the subject of calculating the area of a triangle or many other shapes, could be to guide the student to find out for himself what the concept of area, or volume if we generalize to one higher dimension, is, what this concept tries to convey and measure, then try letting the student find out for himself how to calculate this measure. Along the way, the teacher may provide some helpful leads. This way, the student may even discover not only the calculation for the area of a triangle but even area and volume of much more complicated irregular shapes. He could discover the rudimentary concept of calculus or the way Edison measures the volume of a irregular light bulb --- by filling it with water then measuring the volume of the water instead of complicated calculation which a person trained in rote memory would have done.
The irony here is, I bet Jing herself, like most teachers, has no deep understanding of what the concept, even as simple as that of area or volume, she tries to teach is.
The advantage of the American education over the Chinese counterpart is that while all Chinese teachers stymie and smother any nascent native talent of students, there is a good portion of American teachers and parents who are capable of nurturing individual talents. More importantly the American culture itself is intrinsically individualistic and, thankfully, encourages non-conformists.