“The invention of paper is usually ascribed to Ts’ai Lun . . . a prominent official under Ho Ti (A.D. 89-106). . . . He is said to have made paper out of tree bark, hemp, or fish nets. . . . The oldest examples of Chinese paper known to us today . . . show that at a very early date paper was being made that was thin, white, and of good quality. Since then, paper has been made from bamboo, mulberry, hemp, corn and rice stalks, cotton, flax, silk cocoons, reeds, moss, and a kind of water fungus. . . . The quality of papers varies; surfaces are smooth or rough, weight is thin or thick, and tints range from white through yellow, blue, and gray to quite dark tones. . . . The most famous paper was the kind called Ch’eng Hsin T’ang Chih (paper made at the Pure Heart Hall), a fine, thin, smooth sheet of high quality, considered by some authorities to the best ever made in China. It was perfected in the Later T’ang period (A.D. 923-934) and used by the great painters of the Sung and Yuan periods. Between this fine, smooth paper and the coarse, absorbent kinds are papers of innumerable degrees of smoothness and roughness. . . . Some well-known kinds are Wild Goose White paper, Kuan Yin paper, Blue Cloud paper, White Jade paper, Cicada Wing paper, Ice and Snow paper, and Six Times Lucky sized paper.”

—Mai-mai Sze, from The Way of Chinese Painting: Its Ideas and Technique, 1956.