What Is Chinese Paper? A Guide to China's Traditional Papers

Ask a paper lover "What is Chinese paper?" and the honest answer is a question in return: which one? China invented paper, and it never stopped inventing new kinds of it. What we call Chinese paper is really a family of handmade papers, each developed for a specific job — painting, printing, wrapping, burning — and each still made, somewhere in China, largely the way it was made centuries ago.

This guide introduces the main members of the family. If you came here looking for the famous one, it is Xuan paper, and it gets its own full article. But the family is worth knowing as a whole, because the label "Chinese paper" in Western shops usually hides more than it tells.

The First Paper

Paper was born in China. Tradition credits the court official Cai Lun with refining the recipe around the year 105, blending tree bark, hemp, rags, and fishing nets into smooth sheets. The earliest surviving paper fragments, found in the arid northwest, are older still — the technique was ripening for centuries before it was recorded.

The invention changed everything cheaply. Where writing had been carved on bamboo strips or painted on silk, paper offered a surface that cost a fraction of either. It spread with trade and Buddhism, and each region adapted it to local plants, local water, and local needs. That adaptation is the root of the family: one invention, hundreds of local papers.

The Famous One: Xuan Paper

Xuan paper (xuanzhi, 宣纸) is the king of the family — the handmade paper from Jing County, Anhui, made from blue sandalwood bark and rice straw, and the surface Chinese ink painting and calligraphy have used for over a thousand years. Its gifts are even ink absorption, a soft tooth that holds a brushstroke, and astonishing longevity: scrolls painted on Xuan centuries ago survive bright and unfaded.

It is also the only Chinese paper with a protected craft. In 2009, UNESCO added the making of Xuan paper to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list — the only paper to receive the honor. Read the full guide to Xuan paper for its three grades and how to choose your first sheet.

Pith Paper: The Real "Rice Paper"

What Western art shops call rice paper is, in its original form, pith paper — thin sheets sliced from the inner pith of the rice-paper plant (Tetrapanax papyrifer), a shrub native to southern China. The name has nothing to do with the rice grain; it comes from the plant's nickname, and it stuck the way convenient names do.

Pith paper is light, soft, and slightly spongy. It takes watercolor washes beautifully but is not a surface for Chinese brushwork — it tears too easily and drinks ink unevenly. It belongs on craft tables: pressed flowers, lanterns, collage. Our Xuan paper vs rice paper comparison explains how to tell the two apart in a shop.

Joss Paper: The Wish Paper

The most unusual member of the family is the one made to be destroyed. Joss paper, or zhiqian (纸钱, "paper money"), is coarse paper made from bamboo or straw pulp and finished with squares of gold or silver foil, meant to resemble ingots and coins. At funerals, at the Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, and at family rites, it is burned — the smoke carrying wealth to ancestors in the afterlife.

Western shops sometimes sell it as "wish paper," and the name fits the belief behind it: the paper carries a wish, and burning sends it. The tradition runs deep enough that it spawned an entire art of its own — zhizha (纸扎), the paper effigies of houses, cars, and servants made to be offered at funerals, built on bamboo frames with astonishing realism. It is paper made not to last, but to be given.

Bamboo Paper

Not every Chinese paper was precious. Bamboo paper (zhuzhi, 竹纸) is made from the pulp of young bamboo shoots, and from the Song dynasty onward it was China's everyday paper — the paper of account books, letters, and the printed page. It is beige rather than white, soft rather than strong, and wonderfully cheap.

Today bamboo paper is the practice sheet of Chinese calligraphy classrooms. Ink spreads more than on Xuan and edges feather quickly, which is exactly why teachers like it: if your strokes work on bamboo paper, they will work anywhere. For a beginner, a stack of bamboo paper for drills beside a few good sheets of Xuan is the traditional economy.

Mulberry Paper

Mulberry paper (sangpi, 桑皮纸) comes from the bark of the mulberry tree, beaten into long, tough fibers. It is the strong one of the family — thin but surprisingly hard to tear, flexible enough to fold and refold without cracking. Chinese bookbinders used it for pages and endpapers, calligraphers for mounting, and restorers still reach for it when a fragile scroll needs a backing that will age at the same pace.

The Family at a Glance

Paper	Material	Typical use
Xuan paper	Blue sandalwood bark + rice straw	Ink painting, calligraphy, restoration
Pith ("rice") paper	Rice-paper plant pith	Crafts, lanterns, pressed flowers
Joss ("wish") paper	Bamboo or straw pulp + foil	Burned offerings at rites and festivals
Bamboo paper	Young bamboo pulp	Practice sheets, everyday writing
Mulberry paper	Mulberry bark	Mounting, bookbinding, restoration

Which Chinese Paper Should You Buy?

Match the paper to the job, not the label:

• Ink painting or calligraphy — Xuan paper. Start with semi-raw grade; it forgives while you learn. Our Xuan paper collection carries all three grades in practice sizes and museum rolls.
• Practice on a budget — bamboo paper for drills, with a few Xuan sheets for the work that matters.
• Crafts and lanterns — pith paper, and don't pay Xuan prices for it.
• A gift with meaning — joss paper is not a casual present, but a paper cutting of the double happiness or a zodiac animal carries the family's spirit in a form made to be kept.

China's papers are like its regional cuisines: one word, a thousand local answers. Once you can read the differences, "Chinese paper" stops being a label and becomes a map.