BEIJING, Nov. 22  A Starbucks has opened in the Forbidden City and it's
causing a stink in Beijing.

It could be called globalization run amok and bad taste, even American
cultural imperialism. It is certainly an irritant to Chinese nationalists. Or
it may be just a nice place to get a mellow macchiato on a cold fall
afternoon. But the opening last month of the 19th Starbucks outlet in the
Chinese capital, smack in the middle of the ancient home of China's emperors,
has sparked a tempest in a coffee mug.

"I'm against it," said Duan Fei, a gruff, middle-aged officer in the People's
Liberation Army who visited the sprawling 500-year-old confines of the
Forbidden City Museum today with his wife and son. "This is an American
product. It's imperialism. We should kick it out."

"It's fantastic," said Huang Bing, a twentysomething part-time model from
Shanghai, traveling to Beijing for the first time with her boyfriend. "Coffee
is cool now. The Forbidden City can be cool, too."

Dozens of Chinese newspapers have reported on the issue, focusing on
complaints about what nationalists regard as barbarian infiltration of the
hallowed halls of China's past. It is also a hot topic in China's Internet chat rooms.
Beijing's government, ever vigilant, wants the controversy to blow over soon.
And the folks at the Forbidden City and Starbucks wonder what hit them.

"We had no idea there would be this kind of reaction," said Chen Junqi, the
head of the director's office of the Forbidden City Museum, who has become
the shell-shocked point man in the affair. "Let's just say this is an exploratory deal."

He said the museum board will meet soon to discuss what to do about the
controversy. Starbucks is lapping it up faster than the foam off a latte.

"What we really like is all the exposure," said Brian Sun, the Chinese-born boss
of Starbucks in Beijing, who has been giving nonstop interviews to Chinese reporters.
"Right now, any exposure is good. It gets our name known in the market.
Before, people said, 'What the heck is Starbucks anyway?' Now they know."

Beijing's reaction to Starbucks underscores some timeless issues for China,
notably its conflicted response to Western goods and its love-hate
relationship with its own history. The shop has touched a nerve in particular
because Starbucks is strongly identified as an American brand, and because it
is hawking coffee in a land of tea drinkers. It highlights what many here
feel is the victory of commerce and kitsch over a culture that, everyone in
China will tell you, is 5,000 years old.

Central to that culture is the Forbidden City, whose only equivalent in the
West could be Versailles or Buckingham Palace. First planned in the early
15th century, the 8 million-square-foot complex of 800 golden-roofed
buildings was home to two dynasties, the Ming and the Qing, China's last. The
door frame on one entrance, the Gate of Supreme Harmony, starts out square,
indicating the earth, and ends up round, signifying that all who enter are
now in the realm of heaven.

At one time, foreigners were rarely allowed inside the Forbidden City. It was
only opened to Chinese tourists in 1949, following the Communist revolution.
Today the palace is also one of the world's great museums, containing 1
million paintings and objets d'art. Unfortunately, only a tiny percentage are
ever seen because the museum lacks the space to show its treasures and the
museum's managers--unlike those who built the Shanghai Art Museum in
1996--have never really backed the idea of a museum for the masses.

Last month, Starbucks opened its shop just to the east of the Gate of
Heavenly Purity deep inside the emperor's palace, on the corner of a massive
square. Barely bigger than a closet, it contains an espresso machine, a
counter and two tables with six chairs. It serves about 300 people a day.

Starbucks' new home is in a building called Jiuqinfang in Chinese, meaning
"place of many sleepers," a dozing den for court officials--a bit ironic for
a merchant of caffeine. Right next to the Starbucks kiosk is a store hawking
cheesy porcelain replicas of Chinese antiques.

"We like them here," said one shopkeeper. "It means more foreigners come.
And foreigners have lots of money."

The appearance of commercial outlets in the center of China's cultural
landmarks is almost de rigueur in China these days. The Forbidden City itself
is already home to dozens of shops, selling fans, film, stale cookies and Coke.

There is a Starbucks look-alike with a huge garish sign in the middle of the
Summer Palace on the outskirts of Beijing, where China's emperors used to beat
the heat. The Great Wall in the suburb of Badaling looks like a Wild West brothel
at Christmas, festooned with colored lights, and with touts selling bottled water at
outrageous prices. At the Great Wall at Mutianyu, the PA system on the chairlift
to the top blasts out one song: "I'm a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World."

Part of the reason for this is China's lust for development, a desire that
has both awed and amazed foreigners for years.

"It took some adjusting, just 20 years ago, for me to get used to the
National People's Congress being rented out for multinational banquets," said
Jerome Cohen, an American lawyer with the longest tenure in Beijing.

Cohen recalled a banquet at the Great Hall of the People in 1980 when the
news broke in New York that John Lennon had been murdered, stunning the
diners. "When he felt it was his turn to say something appropriate," Cohen
said, "the vice minister of foreign trade sitting next to me shook his head
sadly and said: 'That man earned a lot of foreign exchange for his country.' "

But another reason involves China's troubled view of its own history. For
decades, even centuries, intellectuals here have lambasted their history,
their glorious past and what Chinese today call their feudal roots. These
roots are both a source of tremendous pride and obvious pain for many
Chinese. Dinner conversations with Chinese intellectuals often turn into
maudlin affairs--with the intellectuals, deep in their cups, alternatively
bemoaning and exalting China's past and lambasting and glorifying the West.

During the Cultural Revolution, teams of Red Guards crisscrossed the country,
smashing temples and pagodas and burning books. Today, Chinese bulldozers
have flattened most of Beijing's old neighborhoods, replacing them with
cement-block buildings in the name of modernization.

All these issues resonate in the Starbucks debate.

"Opening a coffee shop in the Forbidden City is like splattering black paint
on the portrait of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square. Chinese people won't
stand for it!" one angry Beijing resident wrote on a local Web site.

"What's all this stuff about protecting Chinese culture?" countered another.
"Are we supposed to get the women to re-bind their feet? That just won't happen."

The issue becomes even more complicated because China continues to have a
love-hate relationship with the United States.

"Some people believe this is U.S. imperialism," said Chen of the Forbidden
City Museum. "They have powerfully strong ethnic feelings. I don't think we
should criticize them. We should protect them. They are very lovable. Like
wolves who pee around their dens, they are protecting their homeland."

But Chinese are not the only ones uncomfortable with the coffee shop. Orville
Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California at
Berkeley, said he also sees a pattern of Western imperialism in Starbucks'
foray into the Chinese palace.

"Part of what makes Westerners Westerners is that unique Promethean energy
that makes them want to go where they cannot get, and, indeed, are often not
wanted. Whether the Amazon, Tibet, Antarctica or Mecca, there has long been a
perverse desire to penetrate the inner sanctums of the most remote,
sequestered and reluctant places on the globe," he said. "The ne plus ultra
of 'forbidden' places must be the Forbidden City."

But Schell continued: "I have never been one to eschew a nice frothy cappuccino."