Here's the strand of small carnelian beads that imitate zi beads (and/or pumtek beads from Burma).

I was in Taiwan in 1997 at the time the first generation of decorated carnelian beads had been produced, and may have been the first American to bring them back to the US. (They had been making zi imitations in brown agate for about four years, but not carnelian beads.)

The present beads are pretty similar, but quite bit smaller (like Pyu beads).

Oddly, it was because of the round tabular bead with a star that I initially wanted to buy the strand—it being so different from most beads of this class.

I passed up buying an interesting necklace from an Afghan seller, with imitation decorated carnelian beads (in the Sassanian style), because they were too expensive, and two beads were damaged. But I wish I had some of these for my specimen collection too. Maybe next year....

JDA.