Yeah having moved to China from France, I was expecting to meet aliens honestly, and ended up concluding like you there are no essential differences between cultures.

Everything is essetially the same with some limited number of levers being pulled a bit further: girls want to marry a little bit earlier, parents are a little bit more worried abt kids, politicians a bit more corrupt, racism is targeted at different colors in a different hierarchy, all that jazz, but all the patterns I was used to in France simply fit China very well and I didnt find it so difficult to just brush off the odd difference and adapt.

My Chinese parents in law also discovered I have the same strengths and flaws any other Chinese guy their daughter could have found :D