I think that Singles' Day or Guanggun Jie on November 11 would be familiar to most global members. Singles' Day, otherwise known as China's Black Friday, is the largest shopping day in China, with various promotion events tempting consumers. Originally the day was for an entertaining festival for bachelors. However, it was Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-commerce company, that named the day as "Singles' Day" or Shuang Shiyi (双十一, meaning "Double 11") and formed an online shopping phenomenon for singles.

I first learned about the Single's Day in autumn 2009. Although I was not adventurous enough to go out for shopping on the very first Single's Day, I was nevertheless very impressed when I heard about the event. The next year, I made sure not to miss out on the shopping opportunities. Since then, I've always enjoyed the fun of shopping around this time of year.

Among the several major shopping seasons recently trending in China, including ,Shuang Shier (双十二 / December 12) and June 18, but I personally think that Singles' Day is the best time to purchase products at the cheapest price. Of course, people may doubt whether the price is really the lowest. And indeed, some unscrupulous sellers set price high in advance and apply discounts on the day to deceive customers. However, according to a seller on Tmall, whom I personally know, the system of Alibaba controls promotional prices during Singles' Day so that they are set at around 90% of the lowest price over the last three months. In other words, it's possible to trust the discounted price on Alibaba at least.

In 2009, the sales revenue of Tmall during Singles' Day was CNY 50 million. Revenue grew rapidly to CNY 936 million in 2010 and then to CNY 3.36 billion in 2011. In 2013, sales surpassed CNY 100 million only in the first 55 seconds and revenue exceeded CNY 100 billion last year.