It shouldn't interfere with it. But seeing as in my case I need to actively interact with these people and do some talking: the topic of China sometimes comes up whenever I need to grasp for straws on what to talk about. That and my phone is in Chinese and me now and then sending a voice message to my friends back in China makes it so that the topic of China is unavoidable... I'm not willing to just turn off my phone for the hours I'm there, especially when some of these elders are not 100% there mentally.

Luckily, I don't live in the United States (anymore, used to be a citizen). But being from the Netherlands there is this culture of becoming a pariah just by merely a square peg in a round hole.