I agree with you in some levels, but I think assimilation is a more complicated matter that's tied a lot to this discussion of cultural identity. Many Chinese people have been, in a sense, displaced all their lives. After the civil war ended in 1949, a large population of the educated, elite, wealthy or simply Nationalist sympathizers left the country and never returned. My family went to Taiwan, some traveled to Southeast Asia, the more well connected ones went West. Eventually most people settled into one country (usually America, Canada, Europe, Australia) after a generation and because they have continually been branded outsiders, they carved out little nitches of their own. These ethnic enclaves basically are microeconomics that serve a very specific population, like modern day Chinatowns without the tourist draw. You can essentially live, work, eat, shop, socialize within these bubbles, so many immigrants see no need to understand the "outside" world, which coincidentally is the country they immigrated to. It's not right and it's not a good strategy in the long run, more of a gauze wrap on a broken arm, but it's a greater sense of home than many have ever had.

My parents have been in the US for over 40 years: my mom barely speaks English and my dad's social circle is only comprised of Chinese geezers like him. American food and experienced are wholly "foreign" to them. It's actually quite amazing to see.

The concept of an "ancestral home" 故鄉 is incredibly important in Chinese culture, lots of mythology and traditional thinking stems from where your ancestors come from. Home and family is basically the de facto religion of Chinese culture. I have never lived in China and yet I'm asked all the time where my ancestral home is, in that case my great-grandparents' hometown. My dad has never lived in Hunan yet he speaks with a Hunan accent. He told me he cried when he visited his grandmother's childhood home for the first time in his 30s. Home is a very weighty issue for Chinese people and many are too proud or ignorant to realize we have no home. We're constantly branded as outsiders, never truly belonging anywhere, even if we speak the language and social norms. Even in Taiwan, we were labeled as 外省人 which basically translates as "outsiders" [people from outside province].

My grandmother is 98, she left Shandong when she was 21 and never returned. She has lived in the US for 30 years and Taiwan for almost 50 years before that. She still speaks a Shandong dialect, has never learned Mandarin, Taiwanese or English. In many ways, that's the only connection she has to her past and her family.

Is it ignorant? Yeah probably. And ineffective to a large degree. But you see this with a lot of immigrant populations who left countries they can't return to. They bring a large part of their home country to the new country and try to build and burrow themselves in a small imitation of home.