Ah, bikini-clad babes and karaoke. To me, these conjure up not the ghost of Harry Chapin but the ghost of Christmas past. The time: the early 1990s. The place: the middle of China (a.k.a. the land of no Western food or other creature comforts). The small group of Westerners I was part of had been promised a real Christmas dinner with authentic Christmas atmosphere. But the food turned out to be a dollop of some turkey-related product from a can, and the Christmas atmosphere was the aforementioned karaoke disc. ("It's like Christmas because they're Western women," the owner of the restaurant explained.) Things were looking grim. But then we discovered that the restaurant had a "back door" with the Volkswagon plant's private brewery. And it turned out to be a good Christmas after all....