When Zheng He led a fleet of ships to the West, some of his entourage stayed behind when they passed through Malacca. These people settled down and intermarried with local Malay or other ethnic women. The Malay language refers to their male offspring as "Batu Pahat" and their female offspring as "Nyonya". Some people refer to them as "Native Chinese" or "Straits Chinese". Bali Nyonya is mainly concentrated in Malacca, Penang and Singapore in Malaysia. Although they are far away from China, they have inherited the cultural tradition of the Chinese nation, emphasizing filial piety and the order of elders and children, and are very "Chinese" in their cultural practices and religious beliefs. They have incorporated Malay language, clothing and food habits into their daily lives. Over the centuries, most of these locally born mixed-race children no longer speak Chinese, and speak a mixture of Chinese Hokkien dialect and Malay. Batu Pahat Nyonya (or Native Chinese/Qiao Sang) refers to the Chinese descendants of the Ming Dynasty who settled in the early 1500s in the areas of Mangaraja (Malacca), Mangkabuyi and Murofushi (Indonesia and Singapore). (Batu Pahat Nyonya also includes a small number of Tang Chinese who settled during the Tang and Song dynasties but there is no source of evidence of Tang Chinese settling during the Tang and Song dynasties, so Batu Pahat Nyonya generally refers to the descendants of the Great Ming). The culture of these Tang-Song-Ming descendants has been influenced to some extent by the local Malay or other non-Chinese ethnic groups. Men are called Bali and women are called Nyonya. Before the 1960s, Bali Nyonya was an indigenous status (Bumiputra) in Malaysia, but due to certain political factors, they were categorized by the Malaysian government as Chinese (also known as Malaysian Chinese) and have since lost their indigenous status. Some Chinese educated people also call those who grew up with British education "Batu Batu", which is used in a contemptuous way to indicate that they have forgotten their ancestors or are not very Chinese. In addition, the local Minnan people also have a idiom called "three generations into Bali", according to the definition of this phrase, all the third generation of Chinese born in Malaysia have become Bali, but this phrase does not mean contempt, but only means that the third generation of Chinese, due to the adaptation to the local social environment, their culture inevitably with local color.

In addition, Bali also refers to a group of Chinese who call themselves and are known as "Bali", that is, the Bali in Malacca today, as well as in Penang and Singapore before Malaysia's independence. The Bali Chinese speak Malay, and they also call themselves "Peranakan" - Malay for "native-born people", hence "Cina Peranakan" means "native Chinese", a term originally used to identify "Bali people" and "newcomers", i.e. immigrants from China, and "Peranakan" is a term used to identify "Bali people" and "newcomers". The term was originally used to identify "Batu Pahat" and "Sinhala" - immigrants from China. In the 19th century Malay Peninsula, this distinction was obvious and important, as "Batu Pahat" was native-born and "Sinki" was an immigrant, and their habits and political consciousness were not quite the same. Although most Malaysian Chinese are native-born, the term "Peranakan" has become a term of endearment for "Batu Pahat". However, a Malaysian Chinese married a Malay and their son is not a Peranakan, but a half-breed. The Nyonya people are a unique ethnic group of our time.