You could offer to trade the house for a take out menu from a closed Chinese restaurant, and I am OBLIGATED to bring it to the Seller for the Seller's review.

As much as you or I would like it to be black or white what they are saying is they think the HUD interpretation is mainly from Anglo-Saxon values where people aren't supposed to share bedrooms with the opposite sex, but that in other cultures they do so that using HUD is discriminatory.

I'm wondering how many Chinese can afford to stay and work outside of China. 

The notion/idea did not exist in my culture.

If they speak Chinese or are familiar with China market, big plus!

Maybe this is just a cultural thing, but I personally find your reference to a "persons handler" to be a little rough and I'm as fiscally as conservative as they come.  

this sounds like some Chinese social ranking system.

The Chinese RTA are comparable to Ikea.

Or maybe there's a new paradigm/cultural shift where people have to be more independent thinkers because there are soooo many influencers around?

You mentioned wanting to use the house yourself, this becomes a huge problem if you want to actually make any moneyAfter spending way too much time investigating a lot of options in the northern half of the US,  I switched gears and now I buy in the Southern half of the US for 3 reasons:1) you get much higher year-round occupancy rates in the South & it’s simply tough to earn a good ROI in the North if your place sits vacant for a big chunk of the year2) Culturally, the Southern half of the US seems to be a lot more accepting of STRs regulation-wise.