Singles' Day in Chinese

11 November is written 11.11: four ones, four people standing alone. It began as a joke about being single and became the biggest shopping event in China.

Its first name was 光棍节. A 光棍 is a bare stick, and in everyday Chinese an unmarried man. Now most people call the day 双十一, "double eleven", and mean the sale.

We make Dengdeng, a reading app with real stories from China. Every November, a good share of it is about discounts, deliveries, and what people regret buying.

From a joke to a sale

The singles' holiday is usually traced to university students in Nanjing in the 1990s. It was a day to mock being single, or to celebrate it with friends who were too.

In 2009, Alibaba's online mall, now Tmall, ran a one-day sale on 11 November. Other platforms joined, and within a few years 双十一 meant shopping first and singles second.

The single jokes stayed. 单身狗, "single dog", is a self-mocking name for someone without a partner. 脱单 means leaving single life.

The sale runs for weeks

The day itself is now the end of a season. In recent years the sales have started in October.

Most of it works through 预售, presale. You pay a 定金, a small deposit, weeks ahead to lock in the price. Then you pay the 尾款, the rest, when the main sale opens.

Some people set alarms for the moment the final payments open. Others forget the deposit entirely.

The math of a discount

The discounts are rarely a simple percentage. They come as rules.

满减 means "spend this much, get that much off". 满300减50 is 50 yuan off every 300 yuan spent.

That rule creates 凑单: adding items to your cart to reach the next threshold. People share tips for it, compare carts, and argue about whether the extra tissues were a saving or a purchase.

The word for the cart is 购物车. Filling it is 加购, "add to cart", a step the platforms track closely.

剁手

The best-known Singles' Day word is 剁手: "chop off your hands".

It is what you say after buying too much, as in "I should chop my hands off so I stop". People who shop hard in November call themselves 剁手党, the hand-chopping party.

It is a joke about regret. It usually comes a few days before the parcels arrive.

Livestreams

A large part of the selling now happens live. 直播带货 is selling goods on a livestream: a host tries products on camera, counts down the stock, and posts a link.

Viewers say 下单, place an order, in the comments. When the stock goes, it is 秒没, "gone in a second".

快递

After the sale comes the delivery rush. 快递 means a courier parcel, and in November everyone is waiting for one.

• 物流: Logistics. The tracking screen people refresh.
• 取快递: Picking up your parcel, often from a locker or a station near home.
• 拆快递: Unboxing. For some people, the best part.
• 退货: Returning something, once the parcel is open.

A quieter festival

The platforms no longer publish one giant sales total. Alibaba stopped announcing its figure in 2022.

Online, 理性消费, "rational consumption", has become part of the vocabulary: buying what you planned, skipping the bundles, and posting about what you did not buy.

If you want to read more stories from China this month, see today's stories in Dengdeng. Each story comes at three levels, and every word you tap shows its pinyin and meaning.