{"id":14578,"date":"2018-11-15T15:48:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T19:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=14578"},"modified":"2018-11-15T15:48:07","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T19:48:07","slug":"alibaba-breaks-singles-day-sales-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/alibaba-breaks-singles-day-sales-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Alibaba Breaks Singles’ Day Sales Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

Singles’ Day<\/strong>\u00a0(\u5149\u68cd\u8282 \u2013 gu\u0101ng g\u00f9n ji\u00e9), China’s anti-Valentine’s Day, just happened on 11\/11. While it started out as a day for single college students to go out to eat together, it has morphed into a massive day for online shopping<\/strong> (\u7f51\u4e0a\u8d2d\u7269 – w\u01ceng sh\u00e0ng g\u00f2u w\u00f9). China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba<\/strong> (\u963f\u91cc\u5df4\u5df4 – \u0100 l\u01d0 b\u0101 b\u0101) has cashed in big time on the holiday. Sales on Singles’ Day have steadily risen over the years, with Alibaba once again breaking their Singles’ Day sales record this year. Read on to learn more about the holiday and the massive numbers it put up this year.<\/p>\n

Singles’ Day Background<\/h2>\n

The Chinese name doesn’t actually translate as “Singles’ Day.” It’s better translated as\u00a0\u201cbare branch festival\u201d \u2013 a tree with no leaves representing a person with no better half. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Chinese holiday without some far-fetched legend behind it…<\/p>\n

It is said that long ago, on one November 11 evening, four single men were sitting around playing\u00a0mahjong<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(\u9ebb\u5c06 \u2013 m\u00e1 ji\u00e0ng), a very popular Chinese game. On that particular day, the men played\u00a0from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.<\/strong>\u00a0(\u4ece\u4e0a\u4e94\u5341\u4e00\u70b9\u5230\u665a\u4e0a\u5341\u4e00\u70b9 \u2013 c\u00f3ng sh\u00e0ng w\u01d4 sh\u00ed y\u012b di\u01cen d\u00e0o w\u01cen sh\u00e0ng sh\u00ed y\u012b di\u01cen). During their games, no matter who won, the winning card was always the \u201cfour columns\u201d card, which shows four independent, parallel columns in two lines, thus resembling the date \u2013 11.11.<\/p>\n

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Youtiao (fired dough sticks). Image from flickr.com by Kent Wang.
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

For a while, the biggest Singles’ Day tradition was to eat four\u00a0fried dough sticks<\/strong>\u00a0(\u6cb9\u6761 \u2013 y\u00f3u ti\u00e1o) to represent the four ones, and one\u00a0steamed bun<\/strong>\u00a0(\u5305\u5b50 \u2013 b\u0101o zi), to represent the dot in 11.11.\u00a0In the big cities,\u00a0bars<\/strong>\u00a0(\u9152\u5427 \u2013 ji\u01d4 b\u0101),\u00a0movie theater<\/strong>s (\u7535\u5f71\u9662 \u2013 di\u00e0n y\u01d0ng yu\u00e0n), and\u00a0amusement parks<\/strong>\u00a0(\u6e38\u4e50\u56ed \u2013 y\u00f3u l\u00e8 yu\u00e1n) started to run special deals for the holiday, looking to cash in on the single crowd.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the millions of single Chinese,\u00a0dating TV programs<\/strong>\u00a0(\u76f8\u4eb2\u7684\u754c\u76ee \u2013 xi\u0101ng q\u012bn de ji\u00e8 m\u00f9) and dating websites became incredibly popular. One such website (www.jiayuan.com<\/a>) holds an annual party for singles. Held on 11.11, 1,111 tickets are sold at the price of 111 RMB each (how do you say overkill in Chinese?)<\/p>\n

While movie theaters and dating websites may have made a little bit of money off of the holiday, one savvy businessman saw a much bigger opportunity to cash in on the millions of single people in China. Cue Jack Ma, founder of the Alibaba Group.<\/p>\n