This sounds like my personal experience connecting via Air China.

Was flying ULN-PEK-YVR-PDX, with the last leg on Air Canada. There was a weather delay that caused the inbound plane to be late with a 10 hour delay. Upon arrival at PEK at midnight, the transfer desk was slow in trying to rebook me. It probably didn't help that I was pushing them to rebook me on an United flight through SFO so I can get to PDX, and they basically told me to come back the next morning, with no hotel offered because I wanted to be rebooked on UA.

The following not-so-hilarious scenarios ensued:

• Because the ticket was plated on 001, they claimed that they need AA to release the ticket (not true)
• They would only deliver me to YVR, because the booking class for YVR-PDX on AC was no longer available (not true)
• They claimed to have pushed the ticket to UA (not true - since the UA agent could not find my reservation)

After 3 hours of negotiation, and me threatening to switch from Mandarin Chinese to English, they begrudgingly rebooked me on PEK-SFO on their own flight, only because the YVR flight had already posted a delay, with a connection to PDX on AS.

The irony is the PEK-SFO was delayed and led to another misconnection, which means I had to go through the entire rebooking process all over again. Fortunately, CA uses UA employees as subcontractors, so I was able to maneuver through the rebooking process a whole lot easier.