清初臺灣方志的「客家」文本，長期以來一直被學者們視為「講客家話的客家人」之歷史，並據以重建清代臺灣的客籍源流、漢人祖籍分布以及拓墾社會。然而，由於方志一再賦予清初臺灣「客家」極其負面的形象，並宣稱他們主要來自於操潮州話（接近閩南話的方言）的潮州地區，這使得我們必須反省以往閱讀方志的方法，重新注意方志的作者及其意圖。筆者基本上認為：在研究方法或策略上，與其把清初臺灣方志的「客家」書寫看成是一張「客家人的照片」，來觀察客家的面貌；倒不如將之視為一面「鏡子」，藉以照射清初臺灣的社會相。

”Hakka” texts in Taiwan’s local gazetteers in the early Qing have long been regarded as the source of constructing the history of the people who speak Hakka. Moreover, scholars frequently use them as a means to trace the historical origins, to analyze the population distribution, and to construct the history of the land that the Hakka people reclaimed.
However, the local gazetteers had repeatedly provided a strongly negative impression over the images of the Hakka people, and proclaimed that they originated from the Chao-zhou region, speaking the Chao-zhou dialect (close to Minnan dialect). That leads us to rethink the previous methods of reading the gazetteers, and to re-focus on the backgrounds of the authors and their intentions.
This paper argues that instead of viewing these Hakka–related texts from local gazetteer as the photo-similar images, it is more appropriate to view them as a “mirror” which reflects the social dimensions of early Qing Taiwan.