The Guardian: Forget Black Friday And Cyber Monday – 100M Shoppers Splash Out On China’s Singles’ Day

Singles’ Day – or Double Eleven, as most Chinese call it in reference to the day on which it falls – was reputedly started on 11 November 1993 by singleton students who were seeking an excuse to buy themselves presents. Today it is a Chinese institution, creating work for hundreds of thousands of green-uniformed postal workers and vast sums of money for Alibaba, the retail giant credited with turning the day into a commercial phenomenon. Read more at The Guardian.