I wouldn't say many, but the idea of becoming a recluse wasn't exactly unknown to Chinese literati either. One of the times we see this sort of inclination towards seclusion is during the dynastic transition from the Ming to the Qing.

One perspective of the literati vision of quiet seclusion is of the retired scholar-official, a man of great cultural awareness who had rendered due service to his emperor and his empire and has retired in grace. Confining oneself to peaceful surroundings away from others gave this 'ideal gentleman' a chance to appreciate the finer cultural aspects of life. During the Ming-Qing transition, this was... not realistic. The great early Qing drama Tao Hua Shan or the Peach Blossom Fan, provides a much bleaker interpretation of this lifestyle. Set during the collapse of the Ming dynasty in the south of China, many of the characters in the book are Ming loyalists (I know that's a dramatic oversimplification of the story and its extremely intricate plot points, but bear with me). The main character, a preeminent scholar by the name of Hou Fangyu chooses to adopt the lifestyle of a Taoist monk rather than serve the Qing empire as an official. This sort of self-imposed exile into a life of seclusion was not uncommon during the mid-17th century, as the floating world of the late Ming aristocracy came crashing down during the fall of the dynasty.

In real life, there were definitely individuals who mirror Hou Fangyu's path. Zhang Dai, a late-Ming aristocrat and essayist was born into an extremely wealthy family in southern China. He was educated, but owing to the tremendous wealth of his family, he never aspired to official postings and indeed never succeeded in the Imperial Examinations (I'm not even sure he attempted any level of the exams). He was a middle-aged man when the Chongzhen emperor committed suicide, and Zhang Dai found himself in the south during the turmoil of the transition, caught between Ming pretender regimes, domestic chaos and rapidly-approaching Qing armies from the north. An ardent Ming loyalist, Zhang Dai went into hiding in the late 1640s, before deciding to return to his home in 1649-1650. The courts of the Ming pretenders also spawned many of these forced hermits, so to speak. When the Hongguang emperor was captured in Nanjing and his forces scattered, many of the officials that had flocked to him fled south and into the mountains rather than face the possibility of serving a 'barbarian' regime from the North China steppe. It would take a long time for these stalwart Ming loyalists to be re-integrated back into the civil administration, if at all. Even during the reign of the Kangxi emperor, certain imperial projects were being sponsored by the Manchu rulers for Han Chinese officials so that they might begin to take on a more cooperative attitude towards the Manchus.

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Sources (cited in abridged Reddit format):

The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9. Edited by Peterson, W. J. Cambridge University Press. 2008

Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a late Ming man. Spence, J. D. Penguin. 2007

Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers' Jaws. Struve, L. A. Yale University Press. 1993.

The Peach Blossom Fan. Kong, S., et. al. University of California Press. 1976.

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I recommend perennial favorites Confucian Image Politics, and Vignettes from the Late Ming: A Hsiao-P'in anthology as well.