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 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