I think very famously if you move to a new place with a new culture it's hard to make friends writ large. You're an unknown unknown and getting to know you is not the path of least resistance.

I was at a foreign MMA gym one time. I attended a striking class for my first day nobody paid me any attention (I'm a mediocre striker). But after the grappling day, because I'm a BJJ brown belt, everyone wanted to know my name, where I'm from, and they were impressed with my knowledge of the language. I come back the next day and the front desk person asks "you're the brown belt, right?" I don't think they were basally curious that a foreigner was there, but the second I showed that I was exceptional at this hobby they had it was, by some mechanism, enough to want to talk to me. I've rolled with a visitor at the gym only to find they were a UFC fighter and only at that point wanted to learn more about them, so it's mutual.

But here's the thing, I think if you want to do something and you can then that's reason enough. Even if your motivation is silly. Even if you get BTFO, nobody likes you, it wasn't a max win, and you have to move back moving abroad is a romantic and adventurous thing to do. If you tell me that you moved to China because you're a leftist, you saw a cool postcard, and you weren't doing anything important in America I'd think you were rad.

China isn't the old China, not even the street vendor China you watched all those youtube videos about. China is highly regional and every city is different. Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen aren't much different from Dallas, except sparkling clean and no crime. I guess you'd study Chinese, there are private language schools that do that all over and give student visas. It's basically a 3 month party time. As long as you paid, nobody cares if you show up for class or not.