I know a guy from Rui'an who is currently a senior in high school, attending Delco Christian. He lived in Rui'an for most of his life, but came to the U.S. for high school. This interview was conducted on 6 April 2015 in Mandarin.
When you lived in Rui'an, how often did you speak Rui'anhua, compared to Mandarin?
You mean Wenzhouhua?
Yeah, Wenzhouhua.
I spoke Wenzhouhua at home, and also in the city of Wenzhou, with the locals.
Back in China, when you talked to classmates, would you use Mandarin or Chinese?
Mandarin.
And also Mandarin at school, right?
Yup.
So you still know how to speak Wenzhouhua. How fluently do you speak it?
Pretty fluently. If I were to score myself out of five points I would get four.
Over the years you lived in China, did Wenzhouhua change? Did it get used more or used less?
Um... feels like it got used less and less.
In twenty, thirty years, do you think there will still be people speaking Wenzhouhua at all?
There will be, but very few.
Do you know how to speak any other dialects?
No, but I can understand the dialect of Shanghai.
When I attended elementary school in China from 2004 to 2007, everyone almost always spoke Mandarin at school. Rui'anhua was almost never heard at school.
Even though the Wenzhou dialect is supposed to be hard to understand, apparently the dialect of Shanghai is not too hard. This may be because the Shanghai dialect is similar to Mandarin.