Judging by the looks I get an incomprehensible Laowei accent.

My husband has Laowai accent when he speaks Mandarin mostly.

But when he says Mian tiao(noodles)  in Mandarin,He has northern Chinese accent.Pretty standard.It's interesting.

I was in a major department store in Shenyang attempting to speak to the clerk in Chinese.  She looked at me with a blank stare.  She then said "wait" in Chinese and she brought a manager who spoke English and some other foreign languages.  I attempted to speak Chinese to the manager who was very polite but she interrupted me by asking me if I could English since she couldn't speak JAPANESE, having mistaken my very fractured Chinese for Japanese.  That put an end to my shopping in Chinese.  Even at my workplace, they tell me that I speak Chinese with a Japanese accent (I do speak fluent Japanese but it's not my native language at all).

I keep being told I sound like an old Beijinger. 儿儿儿.

  Chinese people have asked me if i'm Chinese a number of times, which is as good a complement to my Chinese as I could ask for. Truth is I think my Chinese is shit, but I must be getting something right. As for accents people say they can recognize Liuzhou in mine. I like that, it's less obvious than going for standard pronunciation. Like a Chinese person coming to England and picking up a Manchester accent. "Aaaarrrright arrr kid!"

I've been told that I have a very standard accent, I guess that's mostly because my wife has really good spoken Chinese and doesn't have any local accent when she speaks mandarin.

I have a dirty loud Wuhan accent because I learn Chinese through imitation.

I have a southern accent, probably after being in Shanghai for four years.

But I've also been told I sound Taiwanese sometimes,  but I think that's just because my Chinese is good but the accent isn't perfect, so their automatic response is: "Oh he must from Taiwan or something".

I studied one year Chinese in Shanghai and then moved to Guangzhou. Whenever someone was curious, he/she would ask me where I'm from since I couldn't be from Guangzhou. Well, the  most obvious reason for this would be that I can't speak Cantonese, but then one time I asked a shopowner and she said it's also because I have a weird accent. She said it's not a typical Northern accent or a Southern accent.

I have been told I sms like a foreigner. Guess my grammar really sucks.

  I'm a Londoner, I study standard Mandarin, but when I speak, it is with a very heavy Russian accent.

  I have no idea why.

Why many ofyou guys worry about the accent? 

We are all FOREGNERS.......A little diferent make sense  啊！

hihihi 

I just get frustrated when people use the totally toneless "I don't give a crap about pronunciation" accent. That just gets on my nerves when it comes from people that love to brag about how great their Chinese is.

Bad. I'm not sure of my accent's name, but half the time it is just plain bad as in incomprehensible. It's a tone thing. I'm working on it.

Bill8899, that's a good post.  Many people that I know, including myself, can't hear the tones at all.  So my Chinese is perfectly nonstandard staccato.

i sometimes feel that i use an Italian Mafia accent from the movies when using Mandarin that i am somewhat unfamiliar with... go figure

I get told I have a Hebei accent.

I never really gave a shit about tones and basically i don't like the sound of mandarin, but i'm rather good at imitating accents and as to me being in china here is almost like being on a set, playing my Laowai role, i start to use a taiwanese accent as anyway i like old chinese culture but i do not like mainland

Nicholasba, or it is NicholasBS, that's a glib answer. 

There are numerous accents in Taiwan, raning from the southern one to the northern one, with Taipei in about the middle.

Having lived for almost 10 years of my life in Taipei, and having studied Chinese assiduously while there, I believe that I do speak Mandarin with a noticeable Taipei accent.