He gave up after the first sip, recoiling at the bitter taste.

Fast forward almost five decades and we find 56-year-old Chinese American David Sun waking up to a cup of freshly ground coffee in Beijing.

The dramatic shift in his personal tastes mirrors the sea change in China's cosmopolitan centres.

Sun, dubbed by some Beijing's Emperor of Coffee, is president and CEO of Beijing Meida Coffee Co, the US-China joint venture that owns the Starbucks franchise rights in Beijing and North China.

He is now selling coffee to tea-drinking China, where many of the 1.3 billion people still share his childhood view about the bitter brew.

Yet it seems that all the tea in China can't stop the rise of Starbucks since the first Beijing store opened four years ago.

A slew of openings in major downtown areas compels the city's caffeine conscious to wake up and smell the coffee.

At present, the company boasts 35 outlets in Beijing and Tianjin. It plans opening another 15 by the end of the year.

Sun sums up his business very simply: "We're there purely to provide a quality drink that people enjoy, another alternative."

He makes his comments calmly as he sips from a mug emblazoned with the company's pervasive logo. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the coffee emperor has only just begun to make his mark on Beijing's lifestyle revolution.

Born in Tianjin and raised in Hong Kong, Sun headed to the United States for further study in business after he finished his college education in Taiwan.

After decades in coffee-drinking America, he became accustomed to the bitter taste.

When he talks about coffee - noting that the perfect espresso should run through the machine from between 18 to 23 seconds to the temperature of the water - it is obvious that he is also passionate about the product his business success is based on.

His track record is impressive. Sun brought McDonald's to Taiwan.

''It was in sometime in the early 1980s when I visited the headquarter of McDonald's in Chicago,'' he recalled. ''I was very impressed by its management system, about training, co-operation and so on.''

In 1984, Sun signed a 50-50 joint-venture partnership with McDonald's to open stores in Taiwan.

The McDonald's business proved successful and was sold in 1994. Sun spent the following year with the Hard Rock Cafe in Taiwan and then looking for another franchise to open in Chinese mainland. He found it in Seattle.

He still remembers the first time he visited a Starbucks in 1991, another experience which left an impression. "I liked the ambience as much as I liked the coffee," he recalled.

He met and became friends with Lawrence Maltz, a former Starbucks executive.

The friendship and common view on China's great potential coffee market finally led to their co-operation over franchising Starbucks in Beijing.

"People were getting more affluent, their disposable income was getting higher and young people were very open to new ideas from abroad," Sun reflected about his decision to bring Starbucks to Beijing.

Investment from H&Q Asia Pacific (a private venture capital firm) and his experience with McDonald's made it easier for him to set up.

He sent many of the senior staff all the way to the Starbucks headquarters in Tacoma, Washington, for up to three months of training before the first store was opened in Beijing in 1999.

In the following years, Sun expects an annual increase of about 12 outlets in Beijing and Tianjin.

"The most enticing part of the experience is to see the opening of a new outlet," Sun said. "I really enjoy it."