The story of proper paper started in China. Similar to the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, almost 50 centuries in the past, invented a pictographic style of writing. They too had been utilizing several types of objects to scribe on, notably pieces of bamboo and woven silk and it is possible that the barkcloth they utilized for other uses from the Paper. Mulberry was made use of too.
Historical documentation tells us that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a member of the government called Tsai Lung, created paper, though it appears from archaeological digs that it was in fact being used in South East Asia for at least two centuries prior to him.
In olden times setting down words or pictograms was mainly done on some form of bamboo or sometimes on lengths of silk, which were then called ji. Nonetheless the prohibitive cost of silk and bamboo being very heavy, these materials were not of great use. Due to these factors Tsai Lun came up with the idea of making use of bark from trees, hemp, rags, and fish nets. In 105AD he put an idea to the emperor on the process of paper manufacture and was endowed with many accolades for his idea. Consequently, since those days paper has been utilized all over and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If this title is accurate, will very likely never be uncovered! However, the most important factor has to be that it was found that if they ground some substances taken from plant material into a mache, expel impure substances, place the mache in water, screen it onto textile sheets and give it time to dry out. When it dried, it dried into a hard, tenacious sheet that was really light, and as long as it did not get damp or wet, turned out to be decidedly resilient.
It's a fact that this very simple of papermaking technologies is still being used in exactly a similar way around Tibet and Nepal, the first regions to make use of the technolgies from what is now the People's Republic of China. A basic frame has a type of cotton cloth stretched over one side, very watery pulp is poured in to the opposite end and moved around until it is level. It is then left suspended that will let the liquid to drain out of it and the mash to dry in to a parchment sheet which may be stripped off.
At some stage a very talented individual realized that making a frame with an arrangement of ribbing and placing a fine bamboo mat that is replaceable across it, would enable the paper-making process to be accelerated fantastically. Instead of using a single mold for every sheet of parchment, therefore severely restricting the number of sheets that can be manufactured at one time, a stack of sieved grume could be built up a layer at a time, with just a strip of cotton thread between them in order to facilitate later separation. The stack would then be pressed gently, and each layer of paste moved to a board to dry.