In order to unveil the history of Changhua Roaping Hakka, members of Raoping Hakka Junior Corp asked the famous culture and history teacher-- Mrs. Qiu for guidance. Mrs. Qiu was an editor of the Records of Yuanlin Townships and a writer of history of Jiu Ben Village. She has a lot of knowledge of Roaping Hakka history.
Mrs. Qiu said, seven townships in Changhua had been through Hakka village survey, and two townships are waiting in line. She was a member of survey committee in Yong Jing Township and Tian Wei Township, and she was also a consultant of Changhua County's Hakka Council. The recent survey showed that there are at least four hundred million Hakka people in Chnaghua, and half of them are Roaping Hakka. They mostly live in Yuanlin, Yongjing, Tianwei, Puxin and Zhutang Townships. Mrs. Qiu visited Roaping's original hometown in Guang Dong, China, and found that the mother language of Guang Dong, which is Roaping Hakka, had been waning. The elders speak Roaping, the middle-agers mostly speak Mandarin and the youth barely understand Roaping Hakka. The reason behind this is because Mandarin and Minnan language strongly influence the local and it leads to Roaping Hakka’s decline.

To get a better knowledge of Roaping Hakka accent’s development history, you need to know from which part of Guangdong came the Hakka ancestors. During the Qing Dynasty, Roaping Hakka was the main language used in Changhua. In 1949, Under the leadership of Lin Xian Kun, about one thousand Hakka people formed an army of volunteers and immigrated to Yongjing, Changhua from Guangdong, China, but in 1952 they moved to the northern area-- Hsinchu because of the fights. That's why a lot of people in Hsinchu today speak Roaping Hakka and that is the standard Hsinchu Raoping Hakka recorded by Hakka Affair Council. Moreover, today's Zhuolan Zhan's Roaping Hakka accent can be tracked back to their ancestors whom moved to Zhuolan from Guang Dong, according to the Hakka Affair Council, it was recorded as Zhuolan Roaping Hakka accent. The environment changed for the last 200 years, so the development of Roaping Hakka in Taiwan diverged in different areas.

Take Yong Jing Qiu's family for example, their ancestors moved to Yong Jing from Guangdong 300 years ago. During the Qing Dynasty, People still spoke Roaping Hakka and according to the land contract which was signed mainly in Taiwanese in 1825, some Hakka words were used in it as well. And yet, Taiwanese dominated over Hakka, so Chnaghua, Roaping Hakka people turned to speak Taiwanese. From 1895 on – the Japanese ruling time – people seldom spoke Roaping Hakka. After 1945, barely anyone speak Hakka in Chnaghua, and some of the Hakka posterity did not even know that they are Hakka people, “It is a common phenomenon.” Said Mrs. Qiu.

When she was in elementary school, she filled out the school information form and put down her identity as "Fujian Roaping" because her parent asked her to do so in order to avoid oppression. In 2004, when she wrote the history of local village, she attended to Yongjing Hakka culture Festival meeting and she heard the scholars said that Yongjing is actually a hometown of Roaping Hakka people. After that she discovered herself as a Hakka.

According to the local, Xunji Zhan, Rengming Lin and Mingzhong Zheng, there are nearly no one who speaks Roaping Hakka and it's very difficult to find someone that is over 60 years old who speaks Roaping Hakka.

When we asked Mrs. Qiu how to recover Roaping Hakka, Mrs. Qiu said, when she wrote the history of local village10 years ago, she found out that she is a Roaping Hakka. But she couldn't speak Roaping Hakka, she had to rely on scholars' research. These three years, she has learnt Roaping Hakka, and she has read many Hakka references, visited Hakka villages in Toayung, Hsinchu and Miaoli and went back to Chnaghua to get to know Roaping Hakka culture and language all over again. She thought we must save our mother language by ourselves, that's why she decided to make Roaping Hakka revival plan. She also went to Toayuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli to record videos and found out that Zhuolan Hakka is originated from Changhua and its accent is closer to Yong Jing accent.
Take Yong Jing accent for example:
Since 2015, as Master of Zhuolan Hakka accent, Mrs. Qiu wrote Changhua Zhuolan Raoping Hakka teaching materials on her own and aroused the declined Roaping Hakka. Mrs. Qiu said, there were at least 5000 people who started to speak Roaping Hakka for the past three years. It is not only the beginning of identification, but also a milestone. She believes when Changhua Roaping Hakka is successfully revived, it will blossom in the coming future.