The story of real paper began in South East Asia. Similar to the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, almost 50 centuries in the past, created a style of writing that used pictures. They also had been making use of many different kinds of things to scribe upon, notably lengths of bamboo and woven silk and it is possible that the barkcloth they made for other reasons derived from the Paper. Mulberry was made use of too.
History leads us to believe that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker called Tsai Lung, invented papyrus, though it appears from archaeological finds that in fact it was being worked with in what is now the People's Republic of China for at least two hundred years prior to Tsai Lung.
During times gone by scribing was mainly on bamboo or on pieces of silk, which were known as Ji in those days. Nevertheless the great price of silk and bamboo being too heavy, these materials were not of great use. Then Tsai Lun thought of utilizing bark from trees, hemp, rags, and fish nets. In 105AD he submitted a report to the emperor regarding the production of paper and got many accolades for his ability. From those distant days paper has been utilized everywhere and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed the above historical tag is deserved or not, will likely never be uncovered! But the most important thing has to be that the discovery was made that they could pound particular substances derived from plants into a paste, withdraw impurities, place the paste in liquid, filter it onto fabric sheets allowing it to dry. After drying, it conglomerated into a firm, robust sheet that was extraordinarily light, and as long as it did not get wet, proved very firm.
It's a fact that this simple of paper making techniques is even now still being used in precisely a similar way in Tibet and Nepal, the initial areas to take the technolgies from China. A simple frame utilizes a cloth manufactured from cotton made to stretch over a side, thin mache is situated in to the opposite side and moved around until it is smooth. After which it is suspended so that it will let the water to drain out of it and the mush to dry in to a sheet of paper which may be stripped off.
By and by a talented developer realized that building a frame with ribbing and putting in place a fine bamboo mat that is replaceable over it, would allow the procedure to be speeded up incredibly. Instead of tying up one mold for every paper sheet, severely limiting the number of sheets that are able to be manufactured at the same time, a stack of sieved mash was able to be built up a layer at a time, with merely a length of cotton thread between them in order to facilitate later separation. The stack would then be squeezed lightly, and each layer of grume moved to a board to dry.