Unknown note with F.Schjoth comments

Below placed personal autograph of F.Schjoth with comments about shown note.

History of this note and autograph is unknown for me.
Any help will be highly appreciated.

If you take down the autograph more accurately, you will know more about the history background about this bank note:

"This note, issued by the Imperial Bank of China for .. ($), was presented to me by Mr. Bismark (? Custom). It was found by him with three pack of Bank Notes (.....) in a Boxer's house, who has assisted in the lootery of the Imperial Bank of China, at Peking in summer, 1900.
Ningpo. 23.September 1901"

• Please particularly be careful of the word of "lootery". This Bank Note was a loot, found after the Boxers Rebellion in 1900. (Lootery - 'The property obtained from robbery').
  
• Two stamps on the NE corner, the square one read as Tung Shang Yin Hang, i.e. [Imperial] Commercial Bank; the rectangular one partially visible read as Jing Chan Tung Yuon, i.e. to be Circulated in the Capital City.
  
• First vertical script (in print) means Pay to bearer, in [______] Scale, Silver of [______]. Therefore this bank note basically is a blank check.
  Second vertical script, partially in print, and mostly in writing, means Gan Ze [i.e. 1900] ?? month ?? day [hard to recognize them].
  
• Dong Chang is, however not as you said: Name of a Province. Most likely, it is part of name of a local bank, or firm.

A study of the Schjoth autograph on the note and the comments from Stephen Tai, I tend to agree with most of the observations of Stephen but I have the following reservations:
(l) My understanding of Schjoth's handwritten note word by word: "This note, issued by the Imperial Bank of China for No 504 yuan serie, was presented to me by Mr. Bismarck (China custom). It was found by him with other packets of Bank Notes (....) in a Boxer's house, who had assisted in the lootery of the Imperial Bk of China at Peking in Summer 1900. Ningpo, 23 ,Sept 1901 Fr. Schjoth".
If we can pay attention to the way Schjoth wrote "the" in the note, then we should guess that he wrote "other packets of Bank Notes" instead of "three packets of Bank Notes". But, this point is not directly relevant to the understanding of the Bank Note itself. Fr. Schjoth wrote in old English and used the word "lootery" instead of "robbery", the more common modern English word. But, it accurately dipicted the Boxers' Riots in 1900 China.
(2) We must open our mind that even Fr. Schjoth himself might not fully understand the note due to the Chinese Characters and his different cultural background. For example, the amount of the note was five hundred silver taels not No 504 yuan serie. The last handwirtten Chinese word means "tael" a common monetary unit to show the weight of silver or gold since Ancient China. This character looks like the Chinese character "four". Similar Silver Bills or paper money were used for business to facilitate transactions long time before the Qing Dynasty. The amounts were normally in whole number of silver taels. That is why the silver bills were found as a packet of five hundred taels or other face value. (This is similar to modern notes, have we ever found a one-hundred-and-four US dollar bill ?).

Concerning the Yuen 504 serial No, I didn't particularly express my idea about it at my previous comments, by then I only try to clarify certain critical scripts such as "Lootery", in order that we can know more precisely where did this note come from.
I agree with Mr.Tam about "Yuen 504" is not a serial number, instead, it should be the money value taken down by the issuer. However, I have a slight departure with him about it was written as "silver of 500 taels".
In my different understanding, the scripts under printed character Yin (Silver) should be Yuen-Wu Bai (5 Hundred) - Ling (Zero) - Si (Four). Yuen in this specific moment, should be combined with Yin and read as Yuen Yin, and the meaning has 2 possibilities: One means "Silver dollar" and the other means "Round Sycee".
The scripts in related to numerals were written in conventional commercial usage, the last script as I believed is not a Liang (tael), F. Schjoth was right in this part, it is a Si (Four). Besides, if like Mr. Tam said, it is a Five Hundred Taels, then normally there won't be a Zero subsequent to Five Hundred, and actually there's a Ling (Zero) over there.

With respective to the note, frankly, I am more interested in the historical background of the note rather than collecting a note like this. However, there are something unsual for this note. The monetary amount was written in conventional (ordinary) chinese numbers instead of the more formal numbers. Whereas the printed and most written scripts were in proper Chinese characters, the last one was in another version of scripts. This is very unsual for an official note of which the Imperial Bank of China was the issuer (according to Fr. Schjoth's comments and the stamps on it.) If we compare it to the other contemporary bank notes, even a small amount such as one tael of Bai Yin was written in formal Chinese number one. Five hundred taels or five hundred silver dollar coins were a lot of money at that time. Logically, the writer should state it formally. However, putting a zero before the ending word "tael" was not an usual way if we following the old Chinese commercial way of writing to avoid any subequent alteration.
Interesting, there were more than one similar note with the same amount according to Fr. Schjoth (That is probably why Fr. Schjoth thought it was a 504 Serial.) If the amount was regarded as five hundred and four silver dollars (Yuan) instead of meaning Yin Yuan (Pao) 500 taels by weight, then the Da Ch'ing Silver coins would have been minted in the years 1899 and 1900 instead of several years later. If you say that the amount was literally stated as "Yin Yuan five hundred zero four" (translated as "five hundred and four silver dollars), then the sentence was not stated in proper Chinese Grammar because the amount was not properly quantified. Of course, all these are still my reasonable guesses and perhaps, only the person who wrote the note knew the exact truth.

Before getting to the core of the discussion, I assume that we'd better access into the essences and patterns of Chinese paper money first, for it will be inadequate to understand this Chinese matter simply with western tools. I have written an article titled "A Brief Analysis on Chinese Paper Notes in Ch'ing Dyasty", published by "Zhong Guo Chieng Bi" (Chinese Numismatics, Quaterly) in Beijing, in 1995.9, where I addressed there were 4 kinds of paper notes issued and used by privates and officials in early China, they severally were:
     (1) Promissory note that with its blank form printed by a bank, and drawn by the bank's client for payment to a 3^rd party. The note would be specified with name of payee, and the amount of payment, due date and so forth. The bank will pay to such a 3^rd party, on his demand, in accordance with what the client has drawn on the face of note. It is about the same as today's "Personal Check" (More technically speaking, it's a "Personal principal check undertaken to be paid by a bank")
     (2) Promissory note that with all kinds of form printed by an issuer, and drawn by the issuer himself for payment to a third party. The note would be specified with name of payee, and the amount of payment, and so forth. The issuer himself has to pay accordingly. It's kind of "Personal Check" in today's German law system countries. (More specifically, it's a "Personal principal check undertaken to be paid by the issuer")
     (3) Promissory note that issued by a bank (local or official), just like a today's bank note, any one who bears this note, may demand the bank to pay accordingly. (More sophistically, "Bank's principal check")
     (4) Draft; or Remittance bill.

To my belief, the F. Schjoth note ought to be classified into (2) as above mentioned; a paper note printed by the issuer (that was why the note is looked informal!), and issued by itself who had an account at the bank, this note can also be regarded as a client's instruction to a bank. Given this, I will have no wonder if this note amounted in 504 dollars or taels, as a matter of fact, I have more than a dozen of paper notes from the same period which are not in regular numbers 10, 50, 100, ... as we used to know, instead they are in 6, 7, 1500, 2500, 28250, ...
Provided, in the case of (3) as mentioned, I will fully agreed with you that the note should be amounted in routine. However, I consider that this note is not the case.
You mentioned "If you say that the amount was literally stated as "Yin Yuan five hundred zero four" (translated as "five hundred and four silver dollars"), then the sentence was not stated in proper Chinese Grammar because the amount was not properly quantified". Please note that this note is incomplete, the last part was missing just from the word "Four" (or you said "Tael", apart from what we have saw from the picture, there should be one or more words in missing, what we can do is to guess. That is also the reason I was not sure about the note was using silver dollar or tael.
You also mentioned in your letter: "If the amount was regarded as five hundred and four silver dollars (Yuan) instead of meaning Yin Yuan (Pao) 500 taels by weight, then the Da Ch'ing Silver coins would have been minted in the years 1899 and 1900 instead of several years later.". This assessment, allow me to say so, however, it is not true. Since 1896, Bejing was widely circulated silver coins minted in Tien-jing. For your reference, I have attached a scan of a silver dollar of the kind dated in the 26^th Year Of Kuang Hsu (1900). Besides, talking about silver dollars circulated in anywhere in Ch'ing Dynasty, they were not necessary to be a local minted, more often, they could be foreign silver dollars, such as Spanish Colonial Mexican dollars, British Trade dollars, ...