¥ 91 billion = $14 billion = £9 billion= absolute madness

That is how much money the Chinese population spent online in 24 hours, on November 11th to be exact, which is also known as Singles‘ Day or Double Eleven. It was originally invented as a sort of anti-Valentine’s day for the unattached, which developed into the biggest online shopping day of the year.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals.
One of the web portals is called Taobao which is similar to eBay.com. It offers nearly a billion products and is one of the 20 most-visited websites globally.
In comparison: Amazon sells over 200 million products in the USA.

What do you buy online? Electronic devises, clothes, bags, furniture?
Have you ever thought about buying toilet paper for the entire year? Or stock up on toothpaste, tissues or shampoo? No? The Chinese love to buy items like that on the 11/11 because they can save a lot of money and everything gets delivered to their doorstep.

Where did you get your pets from? The local animal shelter? Or maybe a friend gave it to you? Well, the Chinese people buy their pets online! It takes a few clicks, make an online payment, wait a few days for the delivery and voilà: Congratulation, you are a pet owner now!

Singles’ Day is about scoring the best deals, spending the smallest amount of money on goods you have been dying to buy and buying as much as you possibly can.

A little ‘tip’ regarding online shopping: in case you visit China over Chinese New Year’s and you don’t have a date yet, have a look on Taobao and rent yourself a possible a possible future husband/ wife.

If you want to see the crazy and exicting China through your own eyes, apply here.