Singles' Day
Next: November 11, 2026
Here's to the happily single.
The story
Where it comes from
Singles' Day began as a student joke. In Chinese slang a single man is a guānggùn, a 'bare stick', and 11 November is written with four of them. The most widely told story, which Nanjing University repeats but cannot confirm, sets the start in 1993, in a dormitory where four final-year students talked at night about how to stop being single. The day spread through Nanjing's campuses and left with the graduates. In 2009 Alibaba ran a one-day online sale on the date, and in 2012 it registered '双十一' ('Double 11') as a trademark.
How it's celebrated
Students and young workers hold parties, group dinners and matchmaking events, and some mark the date with a joke breakfast of four yóutiáo (fried dough sticks) and one bāozi. Couples have taken it up too, and some choose the day to register their marriage. For most people it is now also the year's biggest online shopping day, with discounts across China's shopping sites.
Did you know
- Some students also keep 'smaller' singles' days on 1 January, 11 January and 1 November, dates with fewer ones in them.
- Only 27 merchants took part in Alibaba's first 11 November sale in 2009.
- The 11.11 sale has since spread to online shops across Southeast Asia.
The greeting
光棍节快乐 · Guānggùn jié kuàilè
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