Cathay Jan Pieterszoon Coen to embark on an "unfortunate" (for the Dutch) policy of treating the Ming Empire as "merely another 'oriental' kingdom". The last nail into the coffin of the idea of there being a Cathay as a country separate from China was, perhaps, driven in 1654, when the Dutch Orientalist Jacobus Golius met with the China-based Jesuit Martino Martini, who was passing through Leyden. Golius knew no Chinese, but he was familiar with "Zij-i Ilkhani", a work by the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, completed in 1272, in which he described the Chinese ("Cathayan") calendar. Upon meeting Martini, Golius
Đại Cathay Đại Cathay Đại Cathay, whose real name was Lê Văn Đại was a notorious 1960s Saigon mobster, and was considered as the top or “number one” of the “Four Great Kings” of Saigon's criminal underworld before 1975. The Four Great Kings of the Saigon criminal underworld at the time referred to the four most powerful mobsters in the city, immortalized by the saying: 1st) Đại Cathay, 2nd) Huỳnh Tỳ, 3rd) Ngô Văn Cái, 4th) Ba Thế. Dai Cathay was born in 1940 as the son of Lê Văn Cự, who was a gangster in the market area of Cầu Muối.