He succeeded David Abeel as the ASFS's chaplain at Chinese and wrote essays published in the " Chinese Repository ".
During his tenure in Fujian province, Xu Jiyu had the opportunity to interact with a number of Westerners who had just arrived in the province, such as the American missionary David Abeel, and the British consular officials, Rutherford Alcock and George Tradescant Lay, father of Horatio Nelson Lay.