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That same year he made a radical decision for which he received both derision and praise: he decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail.

His decision was rooted in his deep respect for Chinese culture and his view of the missionary's role. When incredulous fellow Protestant missionaries, who all wore western dress, criticized him for this unbecoming behavior, he pointed out that those who knew the Chinese best came to appreciate their customs. Many Chinese objected to Christianity, he argued, because it seemed to be a foreign religion that tended to mold converts in the ways of Western nations. Taylor, like the Roman Catholic missionaries who for decades had adopted Chinese dress, was ahead of his time.

The early years presented surprises to the young Taylor. Many Europeans lived in luxury in Shanghai, and Taylor thought some missionaries were "worldly." Yet they were in great demand with government officials as interpreters. The general atmosphere of hearty sociability came as something of a shock to the child of a strict Methodist.

Furthermore, money quickly became a sore point. Whereas Church Missionary Society single men received the equivalent of $700 a year, not including rent, he was given a salary of only $80 a year, which was also supposed to cover rent.

Still, Taylor pressed on to get the gospel to the Chinese in the interior who had never heard it. China was composed of 18 provinces, of which only seven had missionaries, and even then, they tended to work in only a few coastal cities. Taylor carped about missionaries who confined themselves to the relative comfort of urban life. He worried about the countless unreached souls of inland China and immediately set about trying to reach them.

In December 1854, within nine months of his arrival, Taylor and Joseph Edkins hoisted sail, and with bags of Chinese Bibles and tracts over their shoulders, visited hamlets along the banks of the Huangpu River. At Songjiang, the extraordinary appearance of two foreigners drew crowds, who at one point made sport of the two men, mocking them and threateningly backing them down a street that ended at the river. Taylor and Edkins barely escaped (hopping onto a passing boat) and continued their 200-mile, round-trip journey. Taylor soon made other trips to the interior, eventually using the city of Ningpo (Ningbo), home to a number of mission organizations, as his base.

The Chinese Evangelization Society proved to be well-intentioned but increasingly incompetent; it failed to pay its missionaries in a timely manner and often sent missionaries unprepared for their work. After much prayer and wrestling, Taylor resigned from its service in 1857. He didn't know exactly how his work would be financed, though he decided he would not ask for donations—nor even let friends and relatives know of his needs. He would simply trust God to supply him.

Taylor also had for some time been seeking a wife. He had been rejected by two women in England, one before and one after he left for China, leaving him deeply lonely. But in 1857, he met and immediately fell in love with 20-year-old Maria Dyer, the much-sought-after daughter of prestigious (though deceased) missionary parents. Despite snobbish and fierce opposition from some in the Ningpo missionary establishment (Taylor's Chinese dress and lack of sophistication put them off), the young couple married in January 1858. It was an uncommonly happy marriage partly because they shared a deep passion to evangelize China even at great personal sacrifice.

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