“Rice paper” seems to be a general term used online for Chinese painting and calligraphy paper, but it can be hard to tell exactly what it is for CBP purposes
Papers used for painting include:
“Grass” paper (buff-coloured practice paper, 草宣 cao xuan) is made from bamboo fibre. There are different qualities of practice paper.
Xuan paper (宣紙 xuanzhi) is made from green sandalwood bark; it can be sized (“cooked”), semi-sized or unsized (“raw”). Xuan is thin and delicate. Raw xuan is very absorbent. Raw xuan comes in rolls (machine-made) or large sheets.
Bark paper ( 温州皮纸 wenzhou pizhi) is made from the the bark of the Paper Mulberry tree. Machine-made bark paper comes in rolls.
Hand-made Chinese paper comes in sheets, based on a Chinese “foot” of about 33 cm. The most usual size is “four-foot”, about 138 x 68 cm.
Rolls may vary in width.
Moon Palace is a smooth white Japanese paper which comes in rolls. it is slightly less absorbent than xuan.
