Usually, but not always, ctrip, elong and agoda will either not list those hotels on their English sites or mark them somehow as Chinese-only in the listing. Sometimes you'll get a cancellation as you did, even though there was no problem evident when you booked. Worst of all, sometimes you won't discover there's a probiem till you arrive at the place, late at night naturally.

In any event, if you read Chinese, you should nonetheless steer clear of the Chinese-language versions of the booking sites -- which do indeed have far more listings than the English versions -- or you'll probably find yourself booked into a Chinese-only hotel.