Glodok

Glodok 裹踱刻 Golodog
Chap Goh Mei celebration in Glodok
Taman Sari is the western-most district

Glodok (Chinese: 裹踱刻; pinyin: guǒ duó kè; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: kó tho̍h khek) is an administrative village of Taman Sari, West Jakarta, Indonesia. The area is also known as Pecinan or Chinatown since the Dutch colonial era, and is considered the biggest in Indonesia, as a majority of the traders in Glodok are of Chinese descent.

Nowadays the area is known as one of the biggest center for electronics in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The word Glodok came from the Sundanese word "Golodog", meaning entrance to a house, as Sunda Kalapa (Jakarta) is the gateway to the ancient Sundanese Kingdom. It was also thought that the name came from the "grojok grojok" sound that water makes coming out of a waterspout in the yard of the Cityhall (Stadhuis), now the Jakarta Museum. A waterspout was built on this site in 1743 and was used for daily needs such as a watering hole for horses.

In Batavia (now Jakarta), Dutch East India Company created commercial opportunities which attracted immigrants from many areas of what is now Indonesia. This economic activity also lured thousands of Chinese people to Java. Swift immigration challenged the city's limited infrastructure and created burdens on the city. Tensions grew as the colonial government tried to restrict Chinese migration through deportations.

On 9 October 1740, 5,000 Chinese were massacred and the following year, Chinese inhabitants were ghettoized in Glodok outside the city walls. In 1998, Glodok was badly scarred during rioting. Because some "Pribumi" Indonesians accused Chinese Indonesians of hoarding the nation's wealth, and because of the large concentration of Chinese Indonesians residing there, Glodok suffered severe violence during the Jakarta Riots of May 1998.