What to do when no one speaks English around you? Often when I attend conferences and meetings, there are some social activities sometimes specifically for graduate students to mix with each other and get to know other students and build possible future collaborations and contacts. Once in a while I end up with a group of let's say all Chinese foreign students. I am not Chinese and I don't know any Mandarin/Cantonese. But it is a little frustrating and in my opinion quite rude when everyone carries on their conversation in Mandarin sometimes bypassing me directly and I have no clue what's going on and I stand there looking like a complete idiot.

If the gathering is something like a cocktail party, I would move on pretty quickly. But if it happens to be a formal dinner then I am stuck at that table and the entire evening might go by with me hardly talking to anyone. My question is, what can I do or say which will make them realize this and to consider other people around who may not know Mandarin?

Just to clarify, this is in the USA and the students I am talking about are all foreign students attending American universities so it isn't a question of them not knowing English. Sometimes I know a friend or two and I would jokingly tell them only English which works for a couple of minutes and then everyone reverts to Mandarin again.

Any ideas?
This is a very relevant and interesting question. I agree with all answers so far that the problem can only be solved by being (pro)active, perhaps more than many young PhD students are comfortable with.

Anyway, what I can add to the discussion is a bit of insight from the "other" side. See, I am Austrian (mother tongue is german), and in my line of research Germany is pretty well-established. Hence, when there is a conference in Europe, german speakers (Germans, Austrians, Swiss) often form about a third or so of all participants. In these conferences, random chatter (not so much technical discussion, which people are used to doing in english anyway) often starts in english when a non-german speaker is present, but usually changes to german when the non-german speaker moves away or seems to be not interested in the conversation (e.g., he/she is turning away, or does not contribute at all to the conversation). Of course this means that it is hard for a non-german speaker to join in on a conversation after it started. Usually, if a non-german approaches the group, chatter will turn to english again, but this usually does not happen unless this person is already good friends with one of the people in the group (or would you approach a group of strangers talking in an unknown language?).

However, I don't think there is much to be done about this - it is just natural that a group of people converses in their joint language that they are all most comfortable with. People are not actively trying to be rude - but, sometimes, what comes naturally is not what is appreciated by the largest group of people in the conference.

Some concret suggestions:


When at a formal dinner, and you don't know anybody, try to not be seated surrounded by larger groups of people who are clearly friends or come from the same university / country. This can make for awkward dinners, even independently of language issues, but it is easy to spot already when sitting down. For networking, it is much easier to get into conversation with other people in your situation (more or less alone currently).
At receptions or conference breaks, as you say yourself, I would usually just move away from people who are excluding me by speaking a different language. If you are actually interested in what they are saying, but can't contribute for language issues, rocinante's suggestion is best - just tell them.