In 1853, Nevius married Helen Coan and, on June 15 of that year, the couple set off, as missionaries, on an arduous 6-month sea voyage to Ningpo, in the Che-Kiang province of China, arriving in the spring of 1854. He and his wife immediately set about learning the language, and Nevius's subsequent interest in the phenomenon of spirit possession was sparked off by conversations about the supernatural with his language tutor, Mr. Tu; the Chinese had a strong belief in the reality and power of the spirit world that was part of an animistic tradition going back thousands of years (see Chinese folk religion).