At the age of 21, Jordan wrote to the Foreign office to consider his recruitment as he desired to be stationed at Japan as a diplomat for unknown reason.

[1] In 1906 he was appointed HM Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to China as the successor to Sir Ernest Satow[5][6] and remained in the post until his retirement in 1920.

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 1909 Birthday Honours and in 1910 received the Freedom of the City of Belfast at the same ceremony as the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

In 1885, Jordan married Annie Howe Cromie (1849–1939), the eldest child of Dr Robert Cromie JP (1813–1901), the ruling elder of Clough Presbyterian church, a general practitioner and the local registrar of births and deaths, and his wife Ann Jane (née Henry; 1823–1899) of Ballyhosset, near Ardglass.

Edith Mary Jordan (1890–1918) was married in 1911 to Lieutenant-General Sir Travers Clarke (1871–1962) and died in the flu pandemic seven years later.