Even though I think you point at a legit source of the issue, it's much more than that - Vancouver has this inherent aspect of isolation, and it's very hard to put one's finger on.

There isn't much of a night life, people are chill, there's a lot of escape to the mountains.

People are just not gregarious, and as so many are transplants (from wherever or E. Canada), then it's just going to stay isolated.

Add to that the near constant rain and lack of other impetus to fire people up (it's like Canada, without the East Coast historical issues), i.e. no Trumps or heavy duty geopolitical fusses ... and it's boring.

That the Chines expat community is of a very distant kind of culture, one in which it's a big jump especially with language skills, makes it even harder. Every time I go to Vancouver I'm kind of shocked at the 'table segregation' - go into any restaurant and you see tables that are either all Asian, or all not Asian.

For what it's worth, my Toronto DJ friend attended UBC and he said there were simply no parties there. It's as though they forgot how to throw 'ragers'. He tried to teach them the ways of partying, to mediocre avail.