积材料 (ji cailiao)

[ycc]

Hello,

I currently reside in the Philippines. In one of the shops with Chinese items, the owner told me that some statues were made from 积材料 ji-cailiao.

I have no access to Chinese IME so I clarify here: ji like in mian ji (area) and cailiao like in material.

Can anyone tell please tell me what ji-cailiao is? It looked like semitransparent, colored plastic, but I am no expert.

In China they used to say that the lenses of my glasses were made from shuzhi 树脂 (resin) I asked the shopkeeper if shuzhi and jicailiao were the same, but he said no.

Since I have problems reading Chinese characters on the Philippine Internet cafes, please try to make a reply that is understandable without having Chinese installed.

Thank you very much.

[abcdefg]

It's going to be extremely difficult to guess your meaning, even more so if you cannot receive Hanzi characters on the computer you are using. Could you post a picture?

Perhaps you have the characters wrong. Did the shopkeeper write the "积材料 ji-cailiao" out for you or did you reconstruct it later from what you thought you heard him say?

From your description of the item, I'd wonder if perhaps the term was referring in some way to plastic. The Chinese for plastic sounds a little like the "cailiao" in your post, with "sùliào" being "plastic" 塑料。