Singles’ Day is a special day in China, celebrated every year on November 11th. It started in the 1990s as a holiday for single people, because the date 11/11 looks like four single people standing together. In the beginning, it was a day of celebration for young people.
In 2009 Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba, turned Singles’ Day into a huge shopping event. They offered big discounts and special deals, and soon other companies joined in. Today, Singles’ Day is the biggest online shopping day in the world, even bigger than Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the United States.
On Singles’ Day, people buy all kinds of things—clothes, electronics, beauty products, and more. In the past few years, shoppers have spent over $100 billion in just one day! Many people also watch live online shows and join in games and activities to win prizes.
Singles’ Day is not just for single people any more. Some couples even get married on this day because they think of it as their lucky day. The holiday has become a symbol of China’s fast-growing online shopping culture and has led to similar sales events in other countries.
Singles’ Day logo
Image: Chrionexfleckeri1350, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
Words
- beauty products = cosmetics
- billion = a thousand million = 1,000,000,000
- Black Friday = the day after Thanksgiving in the US; the first day of traditional Christmas shopping, mostly with special offers
- celebrate = to do something special on a certain day
- Cyber Monday = the Monday following Thanksgiving; online stores have special shopping offers
- discount = to buy something at a lower than normal price
- e-commerce = buying and selling on the internet
- huge = very big
- join in = take part
- similar = almost the same
- special deal = to buy something at a price you would not normally get; for a short period of time