Cathay this period, many cartographers were placing Cathay on the Pacific coast, north of Beijing (Pekin) which was already well-known to Europeans. The borders drawn on some of these maps would first make Cathay the northeastern section of China (e.g. by Gerardus Mercator), or, later, a region separated by China by the Great Wall and possibly some mountains and/or wilderness (as in a by Jodocus Hondius, or a by John Speed). J. J. L. Duyvendak hypothesized that it was the ignorance of the fact that "China" is the mighty "Cathay" of Marco Polo that allowed the Dutch governor of East Indies
Cathay Building consisted of the Cathay Cinema, a restaurant and the dance hall on the ground floor, as well as a roof garden above the cinema and a residential storey block with a penthouse. The first part of the Cathay Building was opened on 3 October 1939 with the 1,300-seat Cathay Cinema, the dance hall and the Cathay Restaurant. In 1 July 1940, the 11 storey residential block was opened for occupancy, with the owners Mrs Loke Wan and Loke Wan Tho occupied the eleventh floor. The building was the first and tallest skyscraper in Singapore and in Southeast Asia, at a