On June 15, 2018, the launch event of Southeast Asian Overseas Chinese Oral History, the first books of Nanyang Series, published by Guangxi Normal University Publishing House, was held in Xiamen University. The first books consist of eight volumes. It contains oral interviews conducted by researchers of Research School For Southeast Asian Studies of Xiamen University to more than 1000 overseas Chinese returned from Southeast Asia in the 1960s. The survey data are more than 500 copies of nearly 5000 pages and more than 6 million words.

The materials published in the first books relate to returned overseas Chinese from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries. The interviews are all personal experiences of the interviewees, showing the migration process of overseas Chinese individuals, families and villages in an all-round way. At that time, the interview involved thousands of interviewees, including factory owners, handicraftsmen, businessmen, shop assistants, farmers and herdsmen, fishermen and workers, etc. They are valuable and significant to understand the political, economic, cultural, national conditions and social status of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The interview materials in the books involve many aspects, such as education, economy, politics, nationalism, feminism and so on. They reveal many new contents and topics that have never been paid attention to before. All kinds of interdisciplinary and multi-material not only provide groundbreaking documents for the study of colonial history, cold war history, national history and international relations history, but also have important value for the research of Southeast Asian history, overseas Chinese history, overseas Chinese social history and other fields.