Bamboo-Paper Making Technique (Jiajiang Bamboo Paper)

Jiajiang hand paper-making takes tender bamboo as its chief material, famous since the Tang dynasty and designated as tribute paper under the Qing, forming with Zhejiang's Fuyang bamboo paper the two great pillars of Chinese bamboo-paper making. Its craft matches the ancient method recorded in the Ming-era Tiangong Kaiwu, and the bamboo-paper making technique entered the first national ICH list in 2006, jointly declared by Jiajiang and Fuyang.

Jiajiang bamboo paper is made by hand-dipping, with fifteen stages and seventy-two steps from raw material to finished sheet, including retting, pulping, dipping and baking; following the old method it takes more than three months to make a sheet, and the resulting calligraphy paper is white and soft, absorbent yet holding the ink, with a fine fibre much prized by artists.

Jiajiang bamboo paper is a living witness to China's hand paper-making and calligraphy-paper tradition; in 2009 Jiajiang was named the "land of Chinese painting-and-calligraphy paper," and more than a hundred hand paper workshops still run today, making it significant for the study of how ancient paper-making spread and of the calligraphic culture of Ba-Shu.