At the Chinese herbs store, the clerk hands Val the different jars of medicine for the brain/memory and she doesn't hand him any money. By the time she leaves, she has never bothered to pay him and that's OK with him.
At the Chinese herbs store, the clerk hands Val the different jars of medicine for the brain/memory. He says the small one was 50 cents. Those are actually decorative jars found in Chinatown pharmacies and not for sale. (If they were, they would be much more expensive than the actual medicine cost of 50 c.) The apothecary would either sell a pre-packaged bottle imported from China, or loose herbs in a paper bag.