When we first arrived in mainland China, we thought we would be able to speak without any difficulty since we studied PuTongHua in Taiwan.

We decided to attend Mandarin class on the mainland. Our school knew our Chinese was already passable so they sent us to classes where the lecturer was from Harbin, Beijing & one other place where their accents are very different from the accents of Taiwan and the south.

First month, we couldn't understand 90% of what the teachers were saying. We were so frustrated. We are now very grateful that we were exposed to different types of accents because we can understand despite the accents.

Interestingly, many at the university where we studied Chinese say that they wished there accent was more "Beijing". It sounds more educated.