Juan Cobo was born in Consuegro, near Toledo, in 1546 or 1547. Educated at the convent of Ocaña, where he entered the Order of Preachers in 1563, he studied at Santo Tomás in Avila. In 1587, he sailed from Cádiz for East Asia, passing first through New Spain before finally arriving in Manila in May 1588. There he immediately set about to preach to the sangley, wasting no time in learning Chinese, probably speaking the Hokkien dialect of southern Fujian. 

Cobo's life was cut short in 1592 in Taiwan, where his ship sank while returning from a diplomatic mission to placate the irate Emperor Hideyoshi of Japan. Despite spending only four years in Manila, Cobo authored several of the most interesting texts written in East Asia by Europeans in the sixteenth century. 

He sent a Carta de la China (Letter about China) to Dominican friars in Mexico, describing the Parián or Chinatown of Manila. He also wrote the Doctrina Cristiana en Letra y Lengua China (Christian Doctrine in Chinese Language), which lay out in Chinese the fundamental truths that a Chinese convert should know about his new religion. But Cobo’s most important works were the two books which follow.