From my experience, these Chinese students probably did try at first to make friends with local Americans, but were made fun of because of their accents.

So rather than be humiliated, they chose to just hang out with people who won't insult them.

I do wonder if they were making fun in a mean way or just poking fun in good nature. Of course, the person experiencing it is the one who can better tell, but it is often not obvious when lacking cultural context. One of my closest friends early on laughed at me because whenever I pronounced "vehicle" it sounded to him as "bagel", it did hurt my ego but I quickly got he meant nothing bad by it.

That said, if the American students were really making fun of the accent of Chinese students in a mean way, I can only assume they themselves never tried speaking any kind of Chinese. It is insanely difficult to get to "understandable" in a tonal language if your native language is not tonal, let alone "without funny accent".

If that were the case, then you should see Chinese international students hanging out with Japanese and Koreans.

But from what I've seen, the various East Asian groups don't interact much. And each group speaks their own native language.

I'd say that the cultural differences between Chinese and Japanese are easily as big as the cultural differences between Chinese and Americans or between Japanese and Americans. So, no they would not be hanging out between each other because of similarity of culture.

If it were the language barrier that was the issue then actually between Chinese and Japanese students while the spoken language is very different, they can sort of communicate between each other via writing.

> the Indian and Chinese students had networks of past-year students, who'd built up databases of exam questions.

A friend of mine joined a frat and he said they had the same thing.

> Honestly, international students are cliquey.

Since we're generalizing here, I'll say the reason for this is, honestly, American students are mean and like to make fun of our accents.