US coffee giant Starbucks has been forced to change the name of its newly opened cafe in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, after the name - suggesting it is close to a famous Buddhist temple - sparked a controversy online.

On Sept 21, Starbucks announced online that its latest store, the Hangzhou Lingyin Temple Cafe, would open the next day.

It soon invited a wide range of criticism and questioning online, with many netizens believing that the smell of aromatic coffee served by the modern Western cafe mixed with the burning incense from the nearby Lingyin Temple could fill the century-old Buddhist site with "the stink of money".

The temple currently charges 75 yuan ($11.90) per person for entry.

The administration office of the Lingyin Scenic Area warned Starbucks on Sunday against using "Lingyin Temple" in the name of the new cafe because it is situated one kilometer away from the temple and not inside it, according to Hangzhou-based Qianjiang Evening News.

It was renamed the "Lingyin Scenic Area Cafe".

The area also features fast food restaurants like KFC, supermarkets and a shopping center, which make up the "service facility zone" of the city's most popular historical site.

In 2007, a Starbucks cafe in the Forbidden City in Beijing was closed after an anchorman from State television CCTV wrote in his blog that a cafe in a historical Chinese site was "trampling" on Chinese culture, stirring widespread support online.