Cathay about the country from Chinese books and from conversation with people of all walks of life. During his first 15 years in China (1583–1598) Matteo Ricci formed a strong suspicion that Marco Polo's "Cathay" is simply the "Tatar" (i.e., Mongol) name for the country he was in, i.e. China. Ricci supported his arguments by numerous correspondences between Marco Polo's accounts and his own observations: Most importantly, when the Jesuits first arrived to Beijing 1598, they also met a number of "Mohammedans" or "Arabian Turks" – visitors or immigrants from the Muslim countries to the west of China, who told Ricci
Đại Cathay and swallow a live cockroach in front of his crew, which Cathay vomited in disgust. Despite that, he still would not incriminate his fellow brothers and sisters. In face of such stubbornness, the police sent Đại to the Thủ Đức Juvenile Reformatory. These reformatory facilities’ sole purpose however was to house kids until they became old enough to be conscripted into the military, earning them a reputation as a "birthplace of thugs". It was in these halls that Cathay later befriended some of his later comrades that would assist him during his reign of Saigon. After leaving the reformatory, Cathay