I moved to the U.S. at the age of 14, from Shanghai. Since then I've done a pretty solid job integrating into the American culture (not much a choice, not exactly that many international students in my Dallas suburb high school), got an undergrad degree, made many friends. I now see myself as half American half Chinese. I spend more time on Reddit than I do on Weibo, and I use Facebook a lot more than WeChat. I can still write Chinese business emails and my favorite authors are Jinyong and John Irving.

My half-brother, who came to the U.S. at the age of 18, is a totally different story. He's smarter than I am, being a math olympiad competitor and got himself an internship at Google as a Freshman and all that jazz. However I noticed that he's done a much poorer job at integrating with the American culture. He doesn't browse Reddit, or HackerNews, or TechCrunch, even though he's into tech and startups. He loves Anime but watches them subbed in Chinese. He watches Chinese streaming sites instead of Netflix. As a 20 year old he doesn't know most of the popular memes on western social sites. He doesn't use Facebook, at all.

Some of that has to do with personal motivation, as in why would I go out and make friends with Americans when 20% of my high school classmates are now in the same Ivy-League school as I am? Some of that is due to technology advancement. Due to the internet it's very easy to live in a personal bubble of your preferred language, culture, and acquiantences, even if it's 10000 miles away from home. He doesn't know whether he even wants to stay in the U.S. after graduation, and I'm sure he literally feels much more at home when he goes back to China.

The last factor may also be the state of the Chinese economy. Early immigrants came with the impression that "if you wanna make it, you have to participate in the American rat race", but in the case of my brother and his friends, they are interested in tech startup, but they have very little interest in the Silicon Valley tech scene. Due to family connections and other backgrounds they think they can do something much more meaningful if they move back to China and raise money and achieve success. Just 10 years ago that kind of thought is unthinkable.

Personally I don't want to see American colleges, which I think are still on average the best in the world, to just turn into diploma mills. I really wish that these young Chinese students can grasp the opportunity and actually learn about some of the deeper culture of the country they are (temporarily) staying in. The world economy is only going to become more intertwined, we need more people who can bridge the gaps.