Single's Day $45bn sales smash records in China

© Ekaterina79

The numbers are simply amazing: Alibaba alone sold over $25bn worth of goods in one day,with the remaining Chinese e-commerce sites almost equalling that. Around 330m packages were handled by courier and logistics companies in a 24-hour period. The event was Singles Day – celebrated in China on 11 November (11/11, yep all the ones) – which traces its origins back to Nanjing University in the 1990s and has since become an occasion for all the unattached young Chinese men and women to go hunting for a partner – and spend a lot of money. To put it into context, Chinese consumers spent four times as much on Saturday as US consumers spend in shops and online on Black Friday AND Cyber Monday combined…