11.11: How China turned Singles' Day into the world’s biggest shopping event

Every autumn, China and dozens of other countries host the 11.1 sales festival, known as Singles' Day. In terms of scale, it has long overshadowed America’s Black Friday: in 2025, the turnover of trading platforms over the 36-day promotion amounted to about $250 billion. However, the previous hype is gradually fading: marketplaces are abandoning aggressive marketing, and buyers are increasingly counting their money. But this giant sale has an unexpected origin: it grew out of a student joke in a Nanjing University dormitory.

How did 11.11 Singles' Day originate?

The essence of the holiday is clear to the Chinese without further explanation; they just need to look at the calendar. The combination of ones, 11. probably we need to continue.

The main incubator of the new tradition is considered to be the campus of Nanjing University.

According to the most common urban legend, in 1993, four local students from a dormitory gave their room a humorous name, "Minhua Zhu," which means "The famous grass has no owner" (this is how the Chinese ironically refer to desirable but single men). The young men regularly spent evenings talking about unrequited love, and one day they decided to organize a large party on November 11 for like-minded single peers. Modern researchers acknowledge the historical basis of this story but recommend treating the colorful details as folklore.

How did the student tradition spread across China?

From Nanjing rooms, self-irony quickly moved to other universities and spread to dormitories across the country. After receiving their diplomas, graduates took the new habit into adult life. With the development of the Chinese internet segment, the student meme turned into a nationwide trend. Later, the holiday acquired an alternative, more optimistic name, "Toguan Jie" — "The Day of Liberation from Loneliness." The date became a legal excuse to organize a blind date evening.

Moreover, the phenomenon perfectly coincided with the era of rapid urbanization and the consequences of the state policy "One family - one child." Due to the traditional desire of Chinese families to have a son, the country experienced an excess of "surplus" men who were deprived of the opportunity to find a partner. Youth internet culture sublimated the heavy social pressure into a salvific self-irony. The generation needed its own carnival, free from traditional family obligations. """

""" Alibaba marketers later acknowledged that the timing of their takeover of this initiative was perfect.

November 11 didn’t traditionally require mandatory family visits or the purchase of status gifts for elders in the Chinese calendar. The date was completely empty, meaning its meaning could be built from scratch. Additionally, November was historically a quiet season in Chinese retail, a dead period between major holidays: the Mid-Autumn Festival had already passed, and the Chinese New Year was still far off. The symbolic play with being single didn’t need lengthy explanations and fit perfectly into early internet culture. By the time corporations stepped in, the audience was already warmed up. All the retail giant had to do was channel that accumulated energy into their virtual carts.

How Alibaba turned Singles’ Day into a massive sale

The holiday’s new, commercial narrative began on November 11, 2009. At that time, the still little-known Taobao Mall platform—later renamed Tmall—managed to attract only probably we need to continue.

The assumption that brands wanted to clear inventory before year-end proved to be spot-on.

Factories were eager to slash prices, preferring to guarantee the sale of outdated goods in a single day, even with minimal margins. This was confirmed by the extraordinary growth of subsequent years of the sales marathon. In 2010, daily sales on November 11 soared to $140 million, surpassed half a billion a year later, and by 2012 reached an apparently astronomical $2.9 billion. Recognizing the scale of this phenomenon, Alibaba quickly patented the phrase “Shuang Shi” (“Double Eleven”). What began as a student prank evolved into a legally protected corporate brand, which competitors were forbidden to use in their advertising campaigns under threat of lawsuits. """