During the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Paralympic Games, athletes from each participating country paraded in the stadium, preceded by their flag.
It is considered a great honour to bear the country's flag in the Parade of Nations.
Per tradition, the host country, in this case the People's Republic of China, marched last however contrary to tradition in the Olympic Games the national team of Greece did not enter first.
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 names.
This made Guinea (几内亚) the first country to enter, as it takes two strokes to write the first character in the country's name (几), and Zambia (赞比亚) last-but-one, ahead of China.