Cathay large Christian population, while the Jesuits in China had not found any Christians there. In retrospect, the Central Asian Muslim informants' idea of the Ming China being a heavily Christian country may be explained by numerous similarities between Christian and Buddhist ecclesiastical rituals – from having sumptuous statuary and ecclesiastical robes to Gregorian chant – which would make the two religions appear externally similar to a Muslim merchant. This may also have been the genesis of the Prester John myth. To resolve the China-Cathay controversy, the India Jesuits sent a Portuguese lay brother, Bento de Góis on an overland expedition
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