For those Chinese speakers who thought Beijing has the most standard and traditional accent and those who wish to learn standard Chinese pronunciation..

Many people including myself thought that people in Beijing speak the most standard form of Chinese. However, followed by my conversation with fellow PRC friends, I found out that instead of Beijing, people from the Northern parts(eg Ha1 Er3 Bin1 and Ji2 Lin2) are the ones who speak the most standard Chinese.

The story goes like this:
Long ago when the Chinese government one to choose a national language, each territory has to send in their own dialect and after some form of assessment, they are down to 2 dialects, one from the Northern part and the other one i forgot =p

After rounds of voting and assessment.. finally Mandarin won! which is why that is the official national language of China! If you have ever noticed, people from the South can speak Cantonese along with Chinese, people from Shanghai can speak Shanghainese, people from the East can speak another dialect etc etc.. There are so many dialects being spoken in China but people from the North can only speak Mandarin and no other dialects..

well, my friend told me a long story..
and I believe that it's true! since people from the North can pronounce all the qiao4 she2 words properly!! and they have a slightly different accent compared to Beijing-ers..

*I know that Beijing is in the Northern part of China but if you look at the map, there are still a few cities to the North of Beijing..