With plenty of tickets to the Wheelchair Rugby still available -  they're a steal at RMB 30 each -  we decided to re-run this article from the September issue of the Beijinger magazine. The competiton runs from Sep 12-16 at Beijing Science & Technology University Gymnasium with the Canadian and US teams going head to head on Sep 14.

When it comes to dynamic-sounding names for a sport, few can match the term Murderball, the original name for Wheelchair Rugby (or Quad Rugby as it's known in the United States). The sport is coming to Beijing this September as an event in the Paralympic Games, and starting Friday, September 12, Beijingers will get the chance to see first hand why the sport wholly deserves its traditional violent epithet. As soon as the opening whistle sounds and you witness the athletes smashing chairs, the game will ride roughshod over any preconceptions you may have about the wheelchair-bound.

Wheelchair Rugby was developed in Canada in the late 1970s. At the time Wheelchair Basketball was the most popular team-sport for wheelchair users, but its reliance on upper body mobility was a turn off to the majority of quadriplegic athletes, who suffer functional impairments to the upper and lower limbs. As a combination of wheelchair basketball and ice hockey, the sport offers quadriplegic athletes the chance to play in both offensive and defensive roles. Played on a basketball court with a volleyball, the aim of the game is to score points by carrying the ball over the line in between the opponents goalposts. The sport shares little resemblance with traditional rugby except for its name and a full contact nature that often unseats participants from their wheelchairs.

Come the Games, come the parties. They dubbed it the "No-fun Olympics,” but after waking up this morning with a couple of snow leopards, a mariachi band and a Cadillac parked in my front room, I beg to differ. Beijing is awash with parties, events and more beer than I can get my clammy little hands on – no wonder there are so many empty seats at the Olympic venues. But before my liver quits and I’m lost to an August of indignity and iniquity, I’ll give you an update of the goings on and ongoings at some of Beijing’s hottest Olympic party spots. Well, two of Beijing's hottest party spots – The Heineken House and Club Bud. These two places have two things in common: a hop-based beverage and location. But other than this, they're very different venues.

Weren't in town for round one? Thought you skip the rigmarole of round two and just buy direct in round three? Get caught on a page that never finished loading during stage three? Only find out about round four when it was too late? Whatever the cause, you now have to endure countless conversations revolving around who's got what and are forced to listen as friends and colleagues brag about that great game of beach volleyball they watched last night or how they're really looking forward to watching the 110m hurdles live. To add salt to the wound, when you watch the games on TV you see hundreds of empty seats smiling mockingly at you from the screen! No matter how it came about, if you've found yourself in the Olympic city without a ticket and you still want to see some events, keep reading below for some tips of how to get close to the action:

Standing eerily still and in machine-like formation over square tables, the army of thousands assembled before us portended something big. From one angle, they resembled angry youth, standing at attention before their school desks. Another interpretation might imagine them as factory workers listening attentively to morning loudspeakers before getting down to work. And then there is the obvious comparison with the theatrical image of soldiers lined up in uniform that has become shorthand for the Chinese government.

But this wasn't about that China, at least not overtly. This was about a China of the past and the future, a China transcending a half-century of difficulties to reach backwards and forwards at once. It's a China defined by a sense of tradition and a capacity for innovation in the arts and sciences - a far cry from the reputation China has for, say, mass politics, rote learning, knock-offs and copy-paste manufacturing.

"I've never seen a country spend so much time showing itself off," a Chinese friend mentioned after watching the ceremony. She made a comparison to North Korea's Mass Games. "But I guess we have a lot to show."

Indeed it's a history and culture that remains unknown to most Westerners, and, as many Chinese will remind you, goes back 5,000 years. Of course, because successive dynasties interspersed with drastic upheavals, that number's not completely accurate. But that didn't stop director Zhang Yimou from attempting to pack it all in to a typically epic, spectacular ceremony.

After Tuesday night's final rehearsal, more details about tomorrow night's grand spectacle are starting to emerge, but we're not talking about another secretly recorded video. According to a recent press conference, British opera singer Sarah Brightman is going to team up with the deep-voiced Chinese singer Liu Huan to belt out the mystery Olympic theme song, fortunately, it won’t be a re-working of the traditional Jasmine Flower (Molihua) song, Tan Dun and Robert Wells have already got dibs on that for the musical accompaniment to the award ceremonies. Details about how they'll light the flame (we're guessing something hi-tech as the flame goes in to hiding at about noon) and who will be carrying the flag for the Chinese athletes as they enter the stadium – Yao Ming, who held the flag aloft in 2004 claims it ain’t him - still remain a mystery. Organizers are not 100% sure about the weather, but they think it might rain in the afternoon and hopefully will be clear when the ceremony begins at 8pm - not the widely reported 8.08pm. For complete details take a look at the full text of yesterday's press conference.

However, it still seems that no one has a good idea of the best place to go to witness the big show – or if they do, they're not sharing. Given that most Beijingers (including us) won't have to go to work tomorrow (although the hard working folks over at the marriage registry offices will be busy helping 16,400 couple tie the knot from 6am onwards), you'll at least have a bit of extra time to work out the details of your opening ceremony plan of attack. The perfect arrangement should allow you to admire all the details of Zhang Yimou's lavish production on the TV, get up close to Cai Guoqiang's awesome fireworks display and also to get out and enjoy the atmosphere on the street before heading on to some decadent after party. We're not sure if it's possible to achieve all of these aims, but here are some tips on the best place to go for each: