in his senior year of college, morse and three of his harvard classmates were recruited to join the imperial maritime custom service under sir robert hart, who had headed the service since 1860. morse was at first stationed in shanghai, where he studied the northern dialect, mandarin, for an hour each day before breakfast, and then served in peking. his spoken chinese became good enough for interpreting day-to-day business, but he could not read well enough to handle a wide variety of texts. he was posted to tientsin in 1877, doing extra duty for the northern chinese famine of that winter and the following summer. when posted to the london office of the customs service, he met annie josephine welsford – "nan" – who had been born in brooklyn to british parents. they were married in 1881. while in london, morse also joined the royal asiatic society and met a number of the leading orientalists of the time. on the couple's subsequent posting to tientsin, nan took an almost instant dislike to china and the chinese, though it is not clear how this affected her husband's attitudes. morse was involved under li hongzhang's direction, in the diplomacy surrounding the sino-french war of 1885 for which he received the order of the double dragon, third division, second class.