there are 7 dialects inside Chinese, among these 7 dialects northern dialect is the biggest, other 6 dialects are spoken only in 江南（southeast of China）,northern dialect isn`t same inside it, 东北、西北、华北、华东、西南they have their own features, maybe this is the accent mentioned by you. 

China has an abundance of languages, dialects and accents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_varieties_of_Chinese. Even when we only consider Mandarin, the way people from Beijing, Shanghai or Chengdu speak differs greatly (in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary for instance).