From Andrew McEwen in Beijing
IT'S when Roger Moore points out the Hall of Preserving Harmony that the visitor typically first notices the faint aroma of arabica in the Forbidden City.
About halfway through the three-hour audio tour of this sprawling museum and palace complex comes a courtyard not made famous in the epic movie The Last Emperor, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.
On one side is a vermillion-walled building that houses a tatty gift shop. There in a corner are six chairs, two wooden tables and a gently hissing espresso maker: about 200 square feet of steaming imperial bitterness.
"Frankly, you would almost not know it was there if you did not know it was there, as it were," says Kath Naday, a tour manager who has been guiding groups through this Unesco World Heritage Site beside Tiananmen Square since 1996.
What Naday calls her "guilty pleasure", Rui Chenggang calls "visual pollution". In a blog, Why Starbucks Needs To Get Out Of The Forbidden City, the state television TV anchor stated the "obscene" shop's presence was "not globalising, but trashing Chinese culture".
By Friday, his post had accrued a phenomenal 540,000 hits and the Palace Museum - as China's top tourist attraction is formally known in China - issued a statement saying the shop was "under review".
"Whether or not Starbucks remains depends on the entire design plan that will be released in the first half of the year," Xinhua news agency quoted museum spokesman Feng Nai'en as saying.
One-third of the shops have already been removed in a plan that calls for the demolition of a five-storey museum and other modern buildings that disrupt the original layout, he said. Starbucks could be next as authorities seek to restore 183 acres of villas, chapels and gardens to their former glory by 2020.
Built in 1420, the Forbidden City was for centuries the middle of the Middle Kingdom, with rulers who specialised in shutting out the rest of the world.
Until 1911, only concubines, court guards or officials were permitted within its rectangular walls. Fewer than 200 windy yards from the offending coffee fragrance is a large map to assist the complex's 8.76 million annual visitors, including 1.6 million foreigners. It is sponsored by American Express. Nearby, a handful of hawkers kick each other to keep warm at outdoor stands advertising Fuji Film and Coca-Cola.
"If we remove all tourist facilities related to Western culture for the sake of original flavour'," wrote Beijing Youth Daily commentator Zhu Shugu on Thursday, "then we would certainly have to expel more than Starbucks." The Starbucks doesn't even have a logo in the window.
"The outlet has not done any damage, and blends in well with the surroundings," said Feng. Plus, as CEO Jim Donald pointed out in his letter to Rui, it was the Chinese who approached Starbucks to open up shop here in 2000.
Since then, sales have rocketed by more than 30% a year in Beijing. Catering mostly to 25 to 40-year-old white-collar workers, the chain's seemingly unstoppable success story today includes more than 200 shops in 21 mainland cities nationwide, with plans for a further 100 this year.
For foreign firms, the Forbidden City furore serves as a useful reminder of the risks of rousing certain age-old sentiments: in 2003, public protests led to a Kentucky Fried Chicken being booted out of Beihai Park, a former royal garden neighbouring the Forbidden City. And in 2004, Beijing forbade a Nike sports shoe advert featuring a US basketball star beating up a kung-fu master and a dragon.
"I feel it's just the latest internet campaign feeding off students' misplaced nationalism," says Naday, an accusation that Rui, an avid Starbucks drinker, vehemently denies.
Still, there's no denying it's been a bad week for Starbucks' Greater China vice-president, Eden Woon. "Things are happening on the internet all the time, and this is just another thing that happened last week, so that's all we can say about that," he said. He refused to comment on whether Starbucks would soon be leaving the Forbidden City.
