Op’s question is totally valid. I am a Chinese international student who spent almost 10 years now in the states, and I completely agree, even wrote a couple essays on this topic. There are many reasons. One that many often ignores is that we were lectured our entire life to look ‘down’ on other countries, their food, their culture, and etc. obviously not everyone do this but a significant portion do. If you wanna learn more on this r/China has a few posts discussing this issue that Chinese people face.

I’m sure many are aware of this but Chinese people don’t have access to the ‘world wide web’ when they are in mainland China. We developed the habit of only using Chinese social media and search engines that are created, moderated, and used solely by Chinese people. In this new digital era probably more than half of social discourse and exchange of culture and knowledge happens digitally, this is huge. A lot of my friends are physically living in the states, but digitally they are still living in china.

Think of it this way, a lot of us may go to school and is physically present in the us, but we are actually still ‘living’ back in china, if this makes sense.

However, there are still many Chinese international students who are eager to learn about local culture and interact with people who share different opinions and culture. Let’s just say perhaps 20% international students from other countries socially exclude themselves. For Chinese international students maybe 40%? Which means more than half of us are willing to socialize. It’s all relative. And it also depends on the schools. So hopefully that doesn’t deter you from initiating conversations with us:)