"forcing it anymore would have been received as a very rude gesture"
Not really, this is very common in China. Saving/gaining face by paying. Anyway, it was OK to yield, but you could have insisted on paying. Whether she would have let you pay is another question. Some Chinese actually get into real fights over who's allowed to pay.
You were really lucky to have met that woman.
I'm anyway surprised that you got that far hich hiking in China. There have been cases that Chinese drivers who took foreigners with them were stopped by the police & fined for providing an illegal taxi service. So, Chinese are rather reluctant to take people with them.
The hotel situation has become worse & worse in recent years. Don't you use booking.com to find hotels? I found that on there it is easiest to find cheap hotels accepting foreigners. Actually, I recently wrote here on steemit about finding cheap hotels in China:
China on the cheap - Hotels #1
Probably too late for you, but if not, you can check it out if you find the time.
Actually hitchhiking in China was pretty easy and we went through lots of police checkpoints with our drivers and never had any problems. The only thing they couldn't work out were our passports, apparently most of the officers hadn't seen one before and there might have also been a language problem.
But, yeah we were really lucky to have met her and she did everything she could to make our time with her memorable. I think China is a little like Turkey when it comes to paying, people in Turkey almost get in fights about the bill it is crazy! Haha! On some occasions we managed to pay before they could and they got really upset about it!
Yeah, we did use booking even when we got to the hotel they would say they don't take foreigners! On one occasion in Hami (Kumul) we had a friend ring the hotel first, they said yes, no problem with foreigners and she even rang the local police station and they also confirmed that it was ok. Upon arrival at the hotel, "sorry we do not accept foreigners"!
Anyway, our time in China was great and we would love to head back there again some time soon! Thanks again for commenting!