The

2008 Summer Paralympics The 2008 Summer Paralympic Games (), the 13th Summer Paralympic Games, took place in Beijing, China from September 6 to 17, 2008. As with the 2008 Summer Olympics, equestrian events were held in Hong Kong and sailing events in Qingdao. It was f ...

opening ceremony was held at the

Beijing National Stadium The National Stadium (), also known as the Bird's Nest (), is an 80,000-capacity stadium in Beijing. The stadium was jointly designed by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron from Basel-based architecture team Herzog & de Meuron, p ...

on September 6, 2008 just two weeks after the end of the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Nat ...

. The event was themed "One World, One Dream" and "Transcendence, Integration, Equality."ABC.
ABC.net
" ''Paralympics opening ceremony begins.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14. The show was attended by about 91,000 to 100,000 spectators.Peopledaily.

" ''China opens Beijing Paralympic Games in celebration of life and humanity.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14."Dazzling show opens Paralympics"
BBC, September 6, 2008 It was approximately 3-hours in length and consisted of 6,000 performers and 4,000 disabled athletes from 148 countries.

Pre-ceremony performance

The site of pre-ceremony performance is the Small Stage to the north of the field. After Pre-ceremony performance, the hosts give interactive guidance to the audience for 40 minutes. The pre-ceremony performance included a series of musical performances.Paralympics.
Paralympics
." ''Summary of the Opening Ceremony part 1.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14. # Military Music Performance: Welcome March # Folk Music Performance: Good News from Beijing Reaches the Border Villages # Drum Music Performance: Ebullient Festival # Male Solo: Come on! # Male-female Duet: Happy Gathering in Beijing # Lead and Chorus: Every one is No.1 performed by

Andy Lau Andy Lau Tak-wah (; born 27 September 1961) is a Hong Kong actor, singer-songwriter and film producer. He has been one of Hong Kong's most commercially successful film actors since the mid-1980s, performing in more than 160 films while maint ...

# Male-female Duet: Miracle in the East # Grand Chorus:

The Blue Danube "The Blue Danube" is the common English title of "An der schönen blauen Donau", Op. 314 (German for "By the Beautiful Blue Danube"), a waltz by the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II, composed in 1866. Originally performed on 15 Februa ...

# Male-female Duet and Chorus: The Drinking Song # Grand Chorus:

Ode to Joy "Ode to Joy" (German language, German: , literally "To heJoy") is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian Friedrich Schiller and published the following year in ''Thalia (magazine), Thalia''. A slightl ...

# Chorus: Beijing, Beijing, I Love Beijing

Opening ceremony

Welcoming ceremony

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...

of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

Hu Jintao Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese politician who served as the 16–17th general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, the 6th president of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 2003 to 2013, and ...

makes an entrance along with

Philip Craven Sir Philip Lee Craven (born 4 July 1950) is an English sports administrator, former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player, swimmer and track and field athlete. Between 2001 and 2017 he was the second president of the International Paralymp ...

, president of the

International Paralympic Committee The International Paralympic Committee (IPC; german: Internationales Paralympisches Komitee) is an international non-profit organisation and the global governing body for the Paralympic Movement. The IPC organizes the Paralympic Games and func ...

. Countdown started several children displayed cards with "60", "50" and "20" after distributing fireworks in

Tiananmen Square Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square (; 天安门广场; Pinyin: ''Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng''; Wade–Giles: ''Tʻien1-an1-mên2 Kuang3-chʻang3'') is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the eponymous Tiananm ...

for 10 seconds and starting at 19:59:50

China Standard Time The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 (eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time), even though the country spans almost five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called ''Beijing ...

at the country and sky above the stadium is the same as the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics closing ceremony from "10" to "1" with all voice screaming as "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" or "Shi!!!, Jiu!!!, Ba!!!, Qi!!!, Liu!!!, Wu!!!, Si!!!, San!!! Er!!!, Yi!!!" and "0" (the moment of opening) is used to release large-scale fireworks above the

stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...

to the Games and herald the start of the officially opening time at 20:00:00

. The flag of the PRC is unfurled and raised while the military band of the PLAGF Honor Guard Soldiers raise the flag and play the national anthem

March of the Volunteers The "March of the Volunteers" (), originally titled the "March of the Anti-Manchukuo Counter-Japan Volunteers", has been the official national anthem of the People's Republic of China since 1978. Unlike previous Chinese state anthems, it wa ...

. More fireworks are displayed. Cartoon marathon athletes wear suits of different colors to form a line of

rainbow A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...

. The rainbow stripe stretches around the stadium. They form the symbol of the Paralympic Games.

Parade of nations

As with the

, the ceremony included a parade of nations, with a flag bearer for each national team. . As Chinese is written in characters and not letters, the order of the teams' entry was determined by the number of strokes in the first character of their respective countries'

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions ...

names. In this list the host country came last Countries with the same number of strokes in the first character are sorted by those of the next character. This made

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

(几内亚) the first country to enter as it takes two strokes to write the first character in the country's name (几). A total of 148 nations enter in the predetermined order. With the Paralympic Games, athletes enter the stadium first and then watch the performances together with the audience. A huge feather consisting of 148 feathers is formed within the Bird's Nest, with each feather symbolizing the ideal of all people with disability in the world.

Artistic section

Sound of birds chirping resonate in the otherwise silent stadium. A sunbird flies from the top of the Bird's Nest. Then the sunbird flies down to the golden meadow in the field to awaken a blind singer from his sleep. The sunbird chirps in front of him, and the singer translates the sunbird's message for the whole audience with

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign ...

. Meanwhile, Chinese and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

voice-over is aired "there are dreams in life after all".Paralympics.
Paralympics
." ''Summary of the Opening Ceremony part 1.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14. The sunbird and the blind singer Yang Haitao (杨海涛) walk onto the center stage in the field together referred to as the "White Jade Plate". Yang performs the song "Heaven" (天域), then saids "My name is Yang Haitao. I am blind. My home is China. If I can see the light for three days, I want to see my father, my mother and you the most…" A white cloud appears, then a trumpeter plays the music of "Hello, Stars" and 300 deaf girls communicate with sign languages, led by 50 sign language teachers. The girls form a series of circles at the "White Jade Plate" and expand. Fireworks are lighted. A girl with one leg appears in a

wheelchair A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, problems related to old age, or disability. These can include spinal cord injuries ( paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), ce ...

. She wears one red shoe having lost her leg in the

Sichuan earthquake This is a list of earthquakes that occurred in Sichuan province of China. Earthquakes with magnitude of 7.0 or greater Earthquakes registering magnitudes between 6.0 and 6.9 See also * List of earthquakes in Yunnan References {{Earth ...

. She is circled by a group of

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...

performers dancing with arm aerobics wearing shoes in their hands. The girl in the center is then carried around. Blind pianist Jin Yuanhui (金元辉) plays the piano to accompany the four seasons theme. The plate panels are rotated in different colors to represent different sceneries. Then 2,000 space robots appear in a circle. They change into the four forms of frog, seagull, cow and duck with a popular cartoon dance. The audience imitate the sounds of these animals: "Croak! Croak! Croak!" " Moo! Moo! Moo!" and "Quack! Quack! Quack!" Fireworks are displayed. The Paralympics mascot Fu Niu Lele (福牛乐乐) is represented. A female singer pushing a baby carriage and a male singer walk and sing on the White Jade Plate. 100 female dancers slowly flow to the White Jade Plate like a galaxy. Thousands of luminous silver threads pull the whole Earth, as if he is carrying a traveling bag full of mountains, rivers and lands of the whole world. A display of 750 performers form birds and swans with their hands. On the blue backdrop it appears as birds or animals in the sky.

Speech

Liu Qi, head of the

Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, or BOCOG, also known as the Beijing Organizing Committee, was an informal name for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. It was also the organizi ...

accompanies

, president of the IPC, to the podium to give an address. Paramount leader

then declares the Paralympics games opened at 22:36 Beijing time.Paralympics.
Paralympics
." ''Summary of the Opening Ceremony part 1.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14.

Paralympic flame lighting of the flame cauldron

After a performance of the theme song '' Flying with the Dream'' by Han Hong and

, the Paralympic flag was raised by PLA Army from Beijing Garrison Honor Guard Battalion and the

Paralympic anthem The Paralympic Games or Paralympics, also known as the ''Games of the Paralympiad'', is a periodic series of international multisport events involving athletes with a range of physical disabilities, including impaired muscle power and impaire ...

played. Representatives of the athletes and judges then take an

oath Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to g ...

. Chinese

goalball Goalball is a team sport designed specifically for athletes with a vision impairment. Participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded inside of it into the opponents' goal. The ball is thrown by hand a ...

judge Hao Guohua took the Paralympic oath on behalf of all officials, while Paralympic runner Wu Chunmiao took the oath on behalf of the competitors.Xinhuanet.com.
Xinhuanet.com
" ''Chinese athlete Wu Chunmiao takes oath on behalf of all Beijing Paralympics competitors.'' Retrieved on 2008-09-14. The first torchbearer, Jin Jing, brought in the

Olympic torch The Olympic flame is a symbol used in the Olympic movement. It is also a symbol of continuity between ancient and modern games. Several months before the Olympic Games, the Olympic flame is lit at Olympia, Greece. This ceremony starts the Olym ...

lit from the

Temple of Heaven The Temple of Heaven () is a complex of imperial religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for a ...

in Beijing. It was handed down by six torchbearers. The Paralympic flame is transferred last by Ping Yali to Hou Bin, the

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

gold medalist with one leg. In his wheelchair, Hou Bin pulls himself up to the cauldron and the flame is lit. A long series of fireworks is displayed around the stadium.

References

External links

Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games Official SiteInternational Paralympic Committee
{{DEFAULTSORT:2008 Summer Paralympics Opening Ceremony opening Paralympics opening ceremonies Ceremonies in China