Jungshi Handmade Paper Factory

Jungshi is a small working paper mill on the edge of Thimphu where deh-sho, Bhutanese handmade paper, is made from daphne bark by the method used for scripture paper for centuries. You can watch the whole process and pull a sheet yourself. Allow 20–30 minutes.

What happens in there

The bark of the daphne shrub and the dhekap tree is soaked, rinsed, boiled and then beaten by hand into a pulp. A worker dips a fine screen into a vat of that pulp, lifts it level, and a sheet of paper forms on it in one movement that takes a couple of seconds to perform and a long apprenticeship to do evenly. The sheets are pressed, peeled off and dried against a heated wall.

That is the entire history of paper in one room, and it is a genuinely good twenty minutes — short, concrete, and unlike anything else on a Thimphu itinerary. Ask and you can usually make a sheet of your own.

The paper is deh-sho, the stock traditionally used for religious texts and for prayer flags — so what you are watching is the raw material of the manuscripts stacked up the road at the National Library.

The shop sells paper, notebooks, cards, bags and lampshades. It’s the most portable good souvenir in Bhutan and it survives a suitcase.

Practicalities

The whole point is seeing the vats in use, and nobody publishes the mill’s working hours — so we check that it’s running before we take you, rather than printing a schedule you could plan a morning around and lose. Mid-morning is the usual answer. The floor is wet and can be slippery.

The factory is about a kilometre from the town centre, opposite the Centenary Farmers’ Market, so the two together make a natural hour and a half by the river on a day the market is trading.

Papermaking is also one of the thirteen crafts taught at the Zorig Chusum arts school up the hill; seeing it taught there and worked here is a satisfying pairing.

The mill was set up in 1990 by the Ministry of Trade and Industry — jungshi means “natural” — and now exports to the US, Japan, Europe, India and Nepal. See things to do in Thimphu for how everything compares.