Musical hints like this have been common in transition scenes in plays, cinema, and television, used to indicate the location, or sometimes used in stereotyping characters and underscoring jokes.
Did the traditional theatres of East Asian nations, or their later cinema and television for that matter, ever pick up on a similar universally recognized "stereotypical European", "stereotypical American" riff to indicate a location or character's background?
For those unfamiliar with the reference, the "oriental riff" is from The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin or The Wonderful Lamp, 1847.
There is a brief audio clip available:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AsianRiff_koto.ogg
and a brief overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_riff
I am not offering this as an answer. Instead, I'm offering this material as additional context so that people who may have heard the oriental riff many times, but not understand the written reference, can connect them in their minds. Further, Asian readers may not have seen enough Western media to understand that this riff is a stereotype symbol, and so for them to understand the concept, I thought this extra context might be helpful. Hopefully, while the mods don't like Wikipedia as a reference, this minor exception might be deemed useful enough not to be deleted since it is not an answer, just additional information.
Would it be out of line to request that we expand the question a bit?
Rather than limiting responses to countries of Asian origin, could we open it up to any culture that has a stereotypical-sounding riff for another culture?