The Roosevelts encounter Chinese money in 1929 while hunting pandas

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From Trailing the Giant Panda by Theodore Roosevelt and Kermit Roosevelt, published in 1929

Here we stopped to arrange our money transfers. This is a most complicated matter as the different denominations, though ostensibly dealing in the same medium, the cent, have entirely different relative values.

The standard, of course, is the dollar "Mex", worth about fifty cents of our money.

The half-dollar piece is the most valuable, -- the paper dollar the least. One dollar in half-dollar silver pieces is worth many dollars in paper. The twenty-cent pieces stand in between.

It takes some 120 cents in them to equal 100 cents in the half-dollars. This is because certain enterprising officials had them coined in brass outside of the country. To make matters worse, the values are different in most places and in certain districts paper and small coin are not accepted at all.

The final straw is added by the practice of separate coinage for the different provinces.

Making out an income tax in America is simple compared with figuring exchange in China.

The "half-dollar piece" he refers to is a silver dollar sized coin, either Mexican or Chinese. When the US changed to the gold standard, the Chinese "Mex" silver dollar was pegged at half a "gold" dollar.

China Dollar 1914 Yuan Shih-kai "Fat Man" type (Silver, 38mm, 26.62gm)

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Keep in mind that this is Theodore Roosevelt Jr, TR's eldest son who was with his brother Kermit

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More financial problems for the brothers:

Finances caused the usual difficulty.

Yunnanese half-dollars were readily accepted in the town, but twenty-cent pieces were not.

The currency in general use was what was known as the Tibetan rupee; occasionally an old "John Company" rupee turned up. A simple method was in vogue for making eight-anna pieces; the rupees were merely clipped in two bits.

Shanghai dollars and silver ingots were also in circulation; the latter varied slightly, but were worth roughly fourteen rupees. Copper cash and two hundred cash pieces were used for smaller purchases.

As may be imagined prices and methods for calculating them varied greatly, but it was still more difficult when leaving this polyglot centre to discover what coins would be acceptable in the smaller towns, where cosmopolitanism was not so far advanced.

Note: The Roosevelts got their panda.