The annual event for lonely hearts is now four times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the biggest shopping day in the US calendarShoppers have spent more than $25bn (168.2bn yuan) during China’s annual Singles Day, smashing previous records for the world’s largest retail event. Single’s Day, promoted annually by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and held on 11 November, was supposedly started by bachelor university students in the 1990s who bought themselves presents as a kind of anti-Valentine’s day. The company flew celebrities to Shanghai to perform at a televised gala to mark the hours leading up to the start of Singles Day. Although not started by the company, Singles Day is now heavily promoted by Alibaba, which runs several online marketplaces in China. Singles Day, which requires an army of logistics workers to deliver millions of orders, has also been attacked for overworking both deliverymen and the stores that profit.

Source: The Guardian November 12, 2017 02:03 UTC