Singles Day

According to CNN, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are NOT the biggest shopping days.

As an aside, are there any American friends reading this who can tell me what Cyber Monday is? 

And it’s not Boxing Day, either. Or Valentine’s Day.

In fact, you could say that it’s the opposite of Valentine’s Day.  The biggest shopping day is November 11, otherwise known as Singleness Awareness Day.  

And if you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it’s not a Western thing, but rather an Asian thing. In China, the holiday is called Guang Gun Jie, or Bare Sticks Holiday (11/11).

As an aside, please don’t ask me what tones to use. I’ll probably mess them up and say something like “bright ribbon street” or “boorish rascal older sister.”

It’s already the 11^th in China, so I figured this was a worthy post for today.  Why the 11^th of November? Because 11/11 looks like 4 single people is one explanation.

Or, it could be because, as Three Dog Night put it, “One is the loneliest number that you ever knew…”

The students at the school I was at would buy Pocky for each other and their teachers. They have an uncanny resemblance to the number 1 (erm, Pocky resembles the number 1; not the students …).  See for yourself…

All of a sudden, I'm hungry ...

At lunchtime the students have crazy competitions to mark the day.  Like how many Pocky sticks can a person stick in their mouths.

I think that’s a waste of perfectly good Pocky if you ask me.

Anyway, some brilliant person at an online retailer called Alibaba (like Amazon on steroids by the sounds of it …) decided to take advantage of that day and offer deals to consumers. And it’s really taken off.

What’s interesting is that, in the article that I read – which you can access here if you so desire – no real reason was given for these deals. Black Friday, for example, is the kick-off to the holiday season in the States.  Boxing Day shopping takes place the day after Christmas, and started off as the day when stores just wanted to get rid of stuff from the previous year to get ready for the new stock coming in.  That, and they wanted to get the Christmas merchandise off their shelves.  Valentine’s Day items are for the one you love. 

So it seems hyper commercialism is to blame here; someone saw a holiday that no one had taken advantage of commercially and decided to exploit it.

The result? $5.3 BILLION in sales in 2013.  They surpassed Cyber Monday sales at … wait for it … 8:42 in the morning.

Then again, I suppose it’s no surprise; seeing that China’s population is currently sitting at about 1.4 billion, it means that each person in the entire country needs to spend less than 4 dollars to meet that goal.  With a mere 316 million people, every American would need to spend… wait for it while I figure out how many 0’s are in a billion and see if my calculator can handle it … 17 dollars to achieve the same result. And in Canada?  Let’s see … 35 million people, give or take … $156 dollars each.

I’m currently very impressed with my math skills.

In short, there’s no way anyone could ever match China’s buying power; they’ll beat us every time.

But maybe we could learn a think or two from the about acknowledging and celebrating singles.

And on that note, Guang gun jie kuai le to all, and to all a good night!