The story of proper paper happened in China. Similar to the Egyptians, the Chinese had, almost five thousand years in the past, developed a type of pictographic writing. They too had been utilizing various kinds of objects to scribe on, most commonly pieces of bamboo and processed silk and it is possible that the barkcloth they utilized for other uses derived from the Paper. Mulberry was used also.
History points to the fact that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker named Tsai Lung, brought out papyrus, although it is almost certain from archaeological digs that in fact it was being worked with in South East Asia for more than likely two centuries prior to him.
Way back in olden times scribing was generally on bamboo or occasionally on lengths of silk, which were called Ji in those days. However, silk was expensive and bamboo being very heavy, these materials were not convenient. About this time Tsai Lun came up with the idea of making use of bark from trees, hemp, rags, and fish nets. In 105AD he delivered a report to the emperor regarding the process of paper making and received many accolades for his thoughts. From that time paper has been in use all over the world and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this particular claim is Marquis Tsai's entitlement or not, will likely not ever be known! But the main consideration must be that the discovery was made that they could pound certain substances derived from plant matter into a mache, withdraw impure materials, place the mache in liquid, screen it onto fabric sheets and give it time to dry out. When fully dried, it congealed into a firm, robust sheet that turned out to be incredibly light, and provided that it was not allowed to get wet, turned out to be exceedingly resilient.
It's a fact that this simple of papermaking technologies is still in use in precisely a similar way within Nepal and Tibet, the first areas to take the technolgies from what is now the People's Republic of China. A simple frame has a kind of cotton cloth stretched over a single side, thin paste is poured in to the far side and spread about until it is level. Then it is left suspended somewhere to let the water to drain out of it and the mush to dry into a parchment sheet which will be able to be taken off.
By and by an extremely clever individual came to the conclusion that manufacturing a frame with ribs and placing a fine removable bamboo mat across this, would enable the paper-making procedure to be speeded up to a much greater degree. Rather than using a single mould for each paper sheet, therefore severely restricting the number of sheets that may be manufactured at one time, a stack of sieved pulp was able to be built up a layer at a time, with just a piece of cotton thread between them in order to help with later separation. The stack would then be squeezed gently, and every sheet of grume transferred to a place to dry.