Singles’ Day falls on every November 11th, and as the name indicates, this relatively new holiday is one exclusively for people who are still living the single life. I was a bit surprised when I searched “Singles’ Day” on the Internet, to find that China is the only country in the world that has set aside a special day for singles to celebrate their lives. Let me tell you some more about this celebration.
An old story goes that once there were four single men, leading very boring lives. None of them were married, or had lovers, or did anything exciting. They just sat around all day and played Mahjong.
One day they played Mahjong from 11 in the morning until 11 at night. During the game, no matter who won, the winning card was always the 'four columns' card (the card shows four independent, parallel columns in two lines). Even more of a coincidence, it was Nov 11, or 11/11. In order to commemorate the day, they nicknamed it Singles’ Day.
Singles’ Day was first celebrated at various universities in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu Province during the 1990s. It got the name Singles’ Day because the date is comprised of four "ones". These college students have since graduated, and carried their university tradition into society. Singles’ Day is now a special day for all fashionable youths.
The main way to celebrate Singles’ Day is to have dinner with your single friends, but it's important that each person pay their own way to show their independence. People also hold 'blind date' parties in an attempt to bid goodbye to their single lives.
For breakfast on Singles’ Day, singles often eat four youtiao (deep-fried dough sticks) representing the four "ones" in "11.11" and one baozi (steamed stuffed buns) representing the middle dot.
Many singles also choose to say goodbye to their single lives on this day. Many attend “blind date” parties and many people choose to marry on this day. In addition to meaning “single” the four “ones” of the date can also mean “only one” as in “the only one for me”. Some people will use this date and this meaning to tell their special someone that they are the only “one” in their heart.
随着时间的发展，中国的“光棍节”今天已经变成了一个“购物节”。
With time China's “Singles' Day” has became a shopping holiday today。
In 2009, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba set the day as a shopping carnival for online sales as the date was both easy to remember and perfectly timed as it hit between the consumer spending lull between National Day and Chinese New Year. It soon became a hit, and Double Eleven became a buying frenzy spread across the world's second largest economy.
Official data suggests that the total number of singles in China has reached 240 million. Nearly 70 percent of the post-90s singles have been involved in less than two relationships, and over 20 percent of them have been single for most of their lives. In 2018, the country's marriage rate stood at merely 7.2 percent, a record low in a decade.
尽管越来越多的“光棍”令父母感到担忧，但这一人口结构的变化已成为零售商和服务商们新的商业机会。
Even though a rising number of "bare sticks" are worrisome to parents, the demographic shift has become a new commercial opportunity for retailers and service providers.
The singles born between 1985 and 1995 generally earn a decent pay. They are willing to spend money. They never give up the pursuit of more prominent, more refined, and more diversified products or services. Therefore, “Singles' Day” has inevitably become a shopping holiday today.
