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Not-So-Happy New Year: Rail Website Woes In China

Credit STR / AFP/Getty Images

The scramble for train tickets for people traveling for the Lunar New Year, China's most important holiday, is always intense. The launch of an online ticketing system has created new headaches. Here, hundreds of people line up to buy train tickets at a railway station in Hefei in eastern China's Anhui province on Dec. 29, 2011.

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

An electronic board at Shanghai Railway Station shows many trains sold out for Jan. 16-18. China's Rail Ministry spent more than $8 million on the ticketing website — which crashed and sometimes charged users without actually giving them tickets.

Credit Frank Langfitt / NPR

On the day Li Xiusheng went to the Shanghai train station, he bought the last same-day ticket back to his hometown in central China's Anhui province. Li, a Christian, thinks it happened because of divine intervention.

By Frank Langfitt

In China during the Lunar New Year holiday, more than 200 million people will travel home in the world's largest annual migration. Every year, Chinese tell horror stories about trying to get train tickets.

The season the New Year falls on Monday, and it was supposed to be different: For the first time, China's rail ministry created a website to reserve seats.

Things didn't work out as planned.

10:01 pm

Thu January 19, 2012

Carol Channing, Still Delightfully 'Larger Than Life'

Credit Peter James Zielinski / Entertainment One

Carol Channing — who turns 91 on Jan. 31 — appears in the 2010 Gypsy of the Year celebration, an annual salute to Broadway's hardest-working chorus performers.

By Bob Mondello

Whenever the late New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld sketched Carol Channing — whether picturing her as an indomitable Dolly Levi, swathed in feathers and sequins, or as carbon-crazed Lorelei Lee, eyes sparkling like the diamonds that were that splendid creature's best friends — he always made her appear a creature composed entirely of lipstick, mascara and hairspray.

8:00 pm

Thu January 19, 2012

Using A New Voice To Enjoy Life After Cancer

Credit StoryCorps

Rene Foreman visited StoryCorps in Los Angeles with her daughter Michelle.

By NPR Staff

Originally published on Thu January 19, 2012 10:01 pm

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In 1999, Rene Foreman was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She underwent surgery that saved her life; it also took her voice box. To speak, Rene now uses an electrolarynx — a small device that she holds against her throat to produce her voice, electronically.

Discussing how having a synthesized voice has changed her life, Rene, 70, told her daughter Michelle that the electrolarynx helps her to enjoy each day, even if it also makes her stand out in some ways.

Of those times, Michelle asks, "How do you feel when people turn around and look at you?"

6:00 pm

Thu January 19, 2012

Megaupload Shut Down By The FBI

Credit Courtesy of Megaupload.

By Laura Sydell

Originally published on Fri January 20, 2012 2:37 pm

Listen

Click the link above to listen to Laura Sydell's conversation with Morning Edition's David Greene about the Megaupload indictment and the attack on the Department of Justice's website by the group Anonymous.

4:26 pm

Thu January 19, 2012

For Two City Slickers, Survival Of The Savviest

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Credit istockphoto.com

A wagon makes its way across the country.

Credit Shelley Lalonde /

Rhoda Janzen teaches English and creative writing at Hope College.

By Rhoda Janzen

Rhoda Janzen is the author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.

Recently my friend Peggy and I decided to make a jaunt from my house in Southwestern Michigan, across the state to Detroit. We took her car. At day's end we pulled into my remote driveway on Lake Allegan. It was then I realized that didn't have my keys. They were in fact, hanging in the little key box in my laundry room.

Oh no.

I had no way of getting into my home.

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