Cathay 1513), they started calling the country by the name used in South and South-East Asia. It was not immediately clear to the Europeans whether this "China" is the same country as "Cathay" known from Marco Polo. Therefore, it would not be uncommon for 16th-century maps to apply the label "China" just to the coastal region already well known to the Europeans (e.g., just Guangdong on Abraham Ortelius' 1570 map), and to place the mysterious Cathay somewhere inland. It was a small group of Jesuits, led by Matteo Ricci who, being able both to travel throughout China and to read, learned
Đại Cathay fled to Đà Lạt to hide until the end of 1966, when Đại Cathay was arrested by police and sent to Phú Quốc island, in which only then did Anh dare to return to Saigon. Duyên Anh's novel “Điệu ru nước mắt" (Tale of One Teardrop) was based off the life of Đại Cathay, and the novel was later adapted into a film by the same name directed by Lê Hoàng Hoa and was acted by two famous Vietnamese actors at the time Trần Quang and Thanh Nga. Đại Cathay Đại Cathay, whose real name was Lê Văn Đại was