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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, Disagree) by realDonaldTrump on Monday November 13 2017, @12:31PM
I think Mao, if he could see it, would be amazed at the many great things happening to China, economically and otherwise. Mao was a terrific builder. I think he would be very pleased to see his amazing buildings in use. The Forbidden City, the Grand Canal, the Three Gorges Dam. I know one thing about Mao: he made things happen. If he worked on it hard, it always, always happened. There's no doubt about it. And the Great Wall, he didn't build that one, it's served China very well. They were having big problems with Mongolians coming in by CHAIN MIGRATION. They built a great, great wall, they got control over their borders. I think Mao, if he could see it, would be amazed that the President of the United States of America visited his fine country. I'm the only guy who could have done that.
And the great Chinese people loved me. They came out in droves, like you've never seen in your life. Like this world has never seen. Believe me, I left a lot of broken hearts in China. In China, they call me Chuang Pu, 床铺. Sounds like "swamp," it isn't "swamp." It means "bed." My Chinese name is very sexy. I'm very busy right now, if I wasn't so busy I would have dated some of the sexy women in China. And Jack Ma who runs Alibaba, I would have visited with him again. A great, great entrepreneur, one of the best in the world. Jack is bringing ONE MILLION JOBS to the #USA. Amazing! He promised that to me. He's doing great things with Alibaba. For himself, for China and for America. He loves America and he loves China. #MAGA 🇺🇸🇨🇳