The Japanese videos show a sequence of 57 (!) videos of the process for making a rice bowl, demonstrating how the thin wood base of the bowl is covered with a succession of base coats of lacquer, fine linen cloth attached with a mix of lacquer & rice glue, then a succession of layers of lacquer mixed with powdery sawdust, fine clay, with sanding between layers, until the final black and red layers are applied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEaNCHxcN2Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TPmTYdh8oI

So I wonder if the Chinese workshop that made these beads, presumably under stressful economic conditions the times being what they were, might have resorted to some economical sort of wax+ sawdust mixture for the base layer covering the wooden bead, with a few layers of actual red lacquer atop that? Could that account for the way the material seems to melt from the inside out? They overdid the wax?