Chna Sg 889 - Interesting Rice Paper Variety

The Gibbons China catalogue doesn't list any paper varieties for this 1946 Chinese stamp. However, this example seems to be on paper quite different from the normal - probably rice paper. Clearly, the perforating machine had trouble with it, as you can see at a glance.

Does anyone who has access to more advanced China catalogues know anything about this, or other Chinese stamps, being printed on rice paper?

Chan's catalogue lists thin paper varieties for most stamps of this set. Same value as for normal paper for the $100 stamp.

By 'thin' paper do they mean rice paper, then?

The paper this stamp is on is actually not that thin, but another one I have in the same series is made from paper so thin that it's translucent.

I suppose I'm wondering if rice paper was used at some stage as a temporary expedient.

I haven't checked through Chan. He simply lists the set, and gives sub-numbers for 'thin' paper; the Chinese term he uses is also just 'thin' paper. Given the time and place, I wouldn't be surprised by variations in the thickness of the 'thin' paper. It was probably pretty difficult to source consistent supplies of paper of a constant thickness.

Interestingly, rice paper we know generally
is not made from rice at all,
but from a leafy shrub from Taiwan. (Fatsia Papyifera)

Cigarette papers (Rizla French "Ricela") and other translucent
papers belong to this imposter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrapanax

rod222, that's just the kind of paper I mean.

I hope you're not suggesting the rice paper rolls at my local Vietnamese aren't authentic either?

We are all in a jocular mood this evening :)
I had that disgusting habit of Sir walter raleigh's
and used to "roll my own" when I was an apprentice.
I always thought I was smoking real rice paper.
"Tally Ho" papers I think they were called.

The great Dr Johnson was in two minds about rolling your own. Boswell records (in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides) Johnson saying
"Smoking has gone out. To be sure, it is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eye, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account, why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out."