The Last Stand in Kwitang

 

Listen, friend. There are places in this world where the past doesn’t just echo—it screams. Where history layers itself like old paint on a haunted house, each coat hiding something darker underneath. Kampung Kwitang in Central Jakarta is one of those places, and if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll pay attention to what I’m about to tell you.

Every morning in that cramped corner of hell they call paradise, the same sounds rise like smoke from a funeral pyre: the haunting chants of zikir drifting from Al-Riyadh Mosque (and let me tell you, those prayers carry weight in a place like this), the sharp crack of bodies colliding at the Mustika Kwitang martial arts school, and the rustle of old book pages that whisper secrets no one should know. But here’s the thing about Kwitang—it’s not just some dot on a map. It’s a palimpsest, a manuscript where the scribes keep writing over the old words, but the old words bleed through anyway.

You can feel it in the narrow alleys that seem to shift when you’re not looking directly at them. The weight of all those lives, all those stories—Chinese merchants with blood on their hands, Arab traders carrying djinn in their cargo holds, Dutch colonizers who thought they owned the world until the world owned them back.

The Legend of Kwee Tang Kiam (Or: How Monsters are Made)

Now, every good horror story needs its monster, and Kwee Tang Kiam was Kwitang’s first and finest specimen. Picture this: sometime in the 17th century, when Batavia was young and mean as a rabid dog, a Chinese wanderer named Kwee Tang Kiam stepped off a boat and into legend. But legends, as any decent horror writer will tell you, are just truth with its face rearranged.

The locals—those poor Betawi bastards who thought they understood their own neighborhood—started calling the place “Kampung si Kwi Tang” after this stranger who’d claimed so much land he might as well have pissed on every tree to mark his territory. Over time, tongues got lazy and “Kwi Tang” became “Kwitang,” because that’s how evil spreads: slowly, subtly, until you’re speaking its name without even knowing it.

But here’s where it gets interesting, where the skin starts to crawl. See, Kwee Tang Kiam wasn’t just your garden-variety merchant. Oh no. This son of a bitch was something else entirely—a master of Kuntao, that vicious Chinese fighting art that turns human beings into weapons. By day, he’d count his coins and smile at his customers. By night… well, let’s just say the VOC period wasn’t exactly known for its peaceful dispute resolution.

Think about it: Batavia in the 1600s was like Dodge City with tropical diseases and religious wars thrown in for good measure. The Mataram Sultanate breathing down everyone’s neck, pirates in the harbor, and enough backstabbing politics to make Washington D.C. look like a church picnic. A man didn’t just need business sense to survive—he needed to know which end of a blade went into the other guy.

But G.J. Nawi, bless his academic heart, thinks the whole Kwee Tang Kiam story is horseshit. In his book—and you can look this up if you don’t believe me—he argues that “Kwik” surnames belong to eastern Java, not western. Claims there’s no historical record of any landowner whose name became a village name. Instead, he figures “Kwitang” comes from Gnuidang, the Hokkien word for Guangdong Province.

Which version do you believe? The romantic legend of a warrior-merchant who carved his name into the land with blood and gold? Or the dry academic theory about linguistic evolution?

I’ll tell you what I think: in a place like Kwitang, both versions are true. That’s the terrifying beauty of a real haunted place—it doesn’t limit itself to just one nightmare.

The School of Hard Knocks (And Harder Punches)

The ghost of Kwee Tang Kiam didn’t just vanish into the tropical night. Oh no, friend. His spirit lived on in something far more dangerous than any wandering specter—a martial arts school.

Haji Muhammad Djaelani, known to his friends as Mad Djaelani (and you’ve got to love a nickname like that), officially founded the Mustika Kwitang Silat School in 1945. But the real birth happened long before, when Chinese Kuntao masters started sharing their secrets with Betawi jawara—warriors who understood that sometimes the only thing standing between you and the grave was how fast you could move your hands.

Zakaria, Mad Djaelani’s grandson, described Silat Kwitang with the matter-of-fact tone of a man who’d seen what those techniques could do to human flesh: “Generally, it confronts an opponent’s attack head-on, relying on hand-to-hand power.” Fast movements, powerful strikes, stances rooted to the earth like grave markers.

This wasn’t your spiritual, meditative martial art. This was the kind of fighting that left permanent marks, the kind that echoed through generations.

And the reputation? Christ, it was already legendary by the 1890s. In G. Francis’s novel Tjerita Njai Dasima, the assassin who murders the protagonist is described as coming from Kwitang: “That fighter’s name was Poasa, he lived in Kampung Kwitang; he was big, tall, and strong, his skin was dark, chest broad, eyes red and gleaming; people didn’t dare look into his eyes.”

Red gleaming eyes and a face marked by weapon scars. Tell me that doesn’t give you chills.

By the late 19th century, Kwitang had earned its reputation as a village of warriors. But like all good horror stories, this one had a twist coming.

The Arabs, the Mosque, and the Transformation

Here’s where the story takes a hard left into Twilight Zone territory. When Kwee Tang Kiam finally died (and the manner of his death remains suspiciously unrecorded), his son turned out to be a gambling addict. Piece by piece, lot by lot, the family empire crumbled under the weight of bad bets and worse judgment.

Enter the Arab merchants.

Cultural historian Djulianto Susantio puts it plain: Kwee’s wastrel son sold the land to pay his debts, and Hadhrami traders snapped it up like vultures on roadkill. These weren’t just any merchants—they were part of a migration wave that had gained serious momentum after the Suez Canal opened, carrying not just trade goods but an entirely different spiritual worldview.

The transformation was swift and complete. The Chinese enclave became an Islamic stronghold almost overnight. Habib Ali bin Abdurrahman Al-Habsyi founded the Majelis Taklim and Al-Riyadh Mosque, which President Sukarno himself inaugurated in 1963.

Suddenly, Kwitang’s reputation shifted from “village of feared warriors” to “spiritual center of Betawi Islam.” The chants of remembrance replaced the sounds of combat training. Prayer mats covered the ground where blood had once been spilled.

But here’s the thing about places with that kind of violent history—they don’t just forget. The old ghosts don’t pack up and leave when new tenants move in. They lurk in the corners, waiting.

The Bulldozers and the Book Haven

The 1960s and 70s brought a different kind of violence: bureaucratic brutality with mechanical muscle. Governor Ali Sadikin decided Jakarta needed to be modern, which meant the “Senen Project” would steamroll right through historical neighborhoods like Sherman marching through Georgia.

Behind the bulldozers came something even more insidious: Presidential Instruction No. 14/1967, which banned public expressions of Chinese identity. Those beautiful swallow-tail roofs, the dragon carvings, the intricate woodwork that had survived Dutch colonization and Japanese occupation—all of it had to go or be “simplified” to look less foreign.

Imagine the sound of those demolition crews, the screech of metal on wood, the crash of walls that had witnessed centuries of life and death. But Kwitang, stubborn as a bloodstain, found a way to reinvent itself.

Out of the rubble rose something unexpected: Jakarta’s legendary book market. Starting in the 1970s, rows of kiosks and stalls lined the sidewalks, offering new and secondhand books at prices that made knowledge accessible to anyone with a few rupiah and the hunger to learn.

The heart of this literary resurrection was Gunung Agung Bookstore, founded by Tjio Wie Tay (also known as Haji Masagung) in 1953. This wasn’t just commerce—this was cultural warfare fought with paperbacks and poetry collections.

The 2002 film Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? turned Kwitang into a romantic pilgrimage site, but by then, the seeds of the next destruction were already planted.

The Digital Apocalypse and the Last Stand

The 21st century brought enemies that couldn’t be fought with Silat Kwitang or Islamic prayers: e-commerce and digital books. The traditional sellers, those stubborn guardians of physical knowledge, found themselves outgunned by algorithms and overnight delivery.

The Jakarta city government delivered the final blow in 2008 with a massive relocation that scattered the booksellers like leaves in a hurricane. The symbol of defeat? The closing of all Gunung Agung bookstores in 2023, ending a 70-year literary era with the finality of a coffin lid slamming shut.

What Remains (And What Lingers)

So here we are, friends, at the end of our tale—or maybe just the end of one chapter. Today, if you walk through Kwitang, you can still hear the echoes: the martial arts students practicing their forms, the call to prayer, the rustle of the few remaining book pages in the handful of shops that refuse to die.

There’s talk of revitalization, of turning the area into a “literacy tourism zone.” But anyone who’s spent time in truly haunted places knows the truth: you don’t revitalize a location like Kwitang. You learn to coexist with its ghosts.

Because in the end, that’s what Kwitang really is—a place where every layer of history, from Chinese warrior-merchants to Arab mystics to Indonesian book lovers, has left its mark. The palimpsest keeps being rewritten, but the old words bleed through, always.

And late at night, when the city’s noise dies down to a whisper, you might still hear them: the clash of training weapons, the rustle of ancient pages, and the voices of all those who lived and died and dreamed in this strange, haunted corner of Jakarta.

The story’s not over yet. It never is, in places like Kwitang.

Believe it or not, as you choose. But if you ever find yourself walking those narrow alleys after dark, you might want to remember what they say about the red gleaming eyes of Poasa, the fighter from Kampung Kwitang. Some legends die hard.

And some don’t die at all.