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China shopping festival smashes record with $25 billion haul
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, said on Saturday its Singles' Day sales extravaganza hit $25.4 billion, smashing its own record from last year and cementing it as the world's biggest shopping event. Once a celebration for China's lonely hearts, Singles' Day has become an annual 24-hour buying frenzy that exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, and acts as a barometer for China's consumers.
As tills shut midnight on Saturday, Alibaba's live sales ticker registered 168.3 billion yuan, up 39 percent from 120.7 billion yuan last year. The dollar figure was up more steeply due to the strength of the yuan against the greenback this year.
The event began soon after a star-studded event in Shanghai late on Friday. As midnight hit, a deluge of pre-orders helped drive a billion dollars of sales on Alibaba's platforms in the first two minutes and $10 billion in just over an hour. "In terms of scale it just dwarfs any other event out there," said Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group.
But what is Singles' Day?
Chinese Singles' Day or Guanggun Jie (Chinese: 光棍节; pinyin: Guānggùn Jié; Wade–Giles: Kuang-kun chieh; literally: "Single Sticks' Holiday") is an entertaining festival widespread among young Mainland Chinese people, to celebrate the fact that they are proud of being single. The date, November 11th (11/11), is chosen because the number "1" resembles an individual that is alone. This festival has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world,[2] with sales in Alibaba's sites Tmall and Taobao at US$5.8 billion in 2013, US$9.3 billion in 2014, US$14.3 billion in 2015 and over US$17.8 billion in 2016.
Related: Alibaba Revenues Surge 61% On Online Shopping
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday November 12 2017, @09:21PM (6 children)
"buy shit, to show how fulfilled a life is, being single"
Riiiight.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2017, @02:46AM (1 child)
The point is you *can* just buy random shit if you're single.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday November 13 2017, @03:01AM
...instead of just getting it for Christmas (bonus: wrapping paper!)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2017, @03:58AM (3 children)
The US has our DINKs, with the one-child policy generation (and the higher number of men than women), I'd bet China is going to have a lot of people choosing to stay single or at least have no children, and just go for the US' 1970s brass ring: "He who dies with the most toys, wins."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 13 2017, @08:42PM (2 children)
"He who dies with the most toys, is still dead. he who has the most criers at his funeral actually wins.
That said, my new pyramid has finally surpassed Grandpa's, and will accommodate a bigger funeral procession"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2017, @09:12PM
While I have spent the last 20 years attempting to downsize my toy collection, I must argue: that which one enjoys for one's self in life is far more important to one's self than whatever might follow one's death.
That said, I do think that what we are doing to the planet - including sticking our heads in the mud and refusing to make a serious effort to get off of it permanently, is immoral and incredibly selfish, and that we should all be taken to task for our reprehensible lack of concern for future generations.
That said, if I get a chance to pilot a carrier-launched F18, go supersonic, do some aerobatics, and maybe blow some stuff up on a test firing range, damn straight, I'm there, waste of resources be damned.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday November 15 2017, @04:31PM
It's amazing how many criers a large enough debt you leave behind can generate :D