A number of Chinese online retailers targeted Chinese consumers with discounted US imported products and cheap shipping costs. Ymatou.com, China’s Amazon.com subsidiary, and Alibaba’s Tmall Global all offered Black Friday promotions in China.

Furthermore, Chinese consumers weremore likely to get involved in Black Friday sales due to US vendors allowing payments to be made in using UnionPay and e-payment systems like AliPay.

Baby product bazaar mia.com CEO Liu Nan is one of the companies that experienced robust sales on Black Friday. “Black Friday targets a different group of consumer [to Singles Day],” said Liu. “Low-priced items sold on the internet can’t feed white-collar workers’ consumption appetite. Instead, they want high-end products from across the globe in order to achieve a better quality of life.”

Black Friday is an annual retail promotion the day after Thanksgiving, or the fourth Friday of November, in the United States that is distinguished by extremely discounted sales over which US shoppers fight over, even causing injuries and deaths.

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In less than a decade, it has drastically evolved. In fact, an unidentified bar in Shenyang, Liaoning distanced itself from the shopping and romance by providing a writhing dancer in a bikini for its patrons to freely pour beer upon.

Maybe it’s slowly becoming China’s version of the popular US “Spring Break”?

“Dancing in a wading pool covered in beer” isn’t normally a popular activity in China, a country known for its conservative attitudes towards sexuality, and was not well-received by netizens online. One person said, “Vulgarity without limits.” Another person wrote, “Despicable. This isn’t a promotion for a (bar), this is flat-out prostitution! People nowadays really have no restraints holding them back.”

Yet another person took the opportunity to point out: “I can see a police car outside the window (in the last picture).”

With this latest salvo shot in the War on Singles’ Day, who can say if November 11 will become the future date for wet T-shirt competitions and beer bong consumption in what will potentially be China’s own Spring Break festival.

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For instance, dating website Jiayuan.com found that northern men were much less likely to accept a marriage proposal from their girlfriend than men from China’s south. In a poll that included some 85 million respondents from throughout China, male respondents from the northern provinces and regions of Heilongjiang, Hebei and Shandong were the most opposed to the idea, while men from Zhejiang and Jiangsu and Shanghai were most receptive.

As consultant Zhang Jiarui explained, the divide is due to deep-seated preconceptions of male superiority.

“Influenced by such thinking, Chinese tend to feel that men should take the initiative in doing many things, including wooing women, rather than the other way around,” Zhang said. “Although the inferiority concept is dying out and Chinese women are more open and proactive in modern society, in some parts of China, as mentioned in the survey, men still believe that they should be the first to ask about starting a relationship.”

Eighty-five percent of Beijing men and 95 percent of Guangzhou women said they were deeply anxious over not having found a marriage partner. On the other hand, men from the southern city of Guangzhou were the least to be worried over not being married, with 41 percent saying they have never gone on an arranged date before.

Meanwhile, Shanghai women are the most active people in the country when it comes to trying to solve their romantic dilemmas, with 75 percent saying they have gone on arranged dates.

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On the eve of Singles’ Day this year on November 10, online retailers in Panyu, Guangdong were getting ready for the biggest sales day of the year by holding a pep rally. But this wasn’t any normal rally: it included altars of Jack Ma as well as Liu Qiangdong, the owner of rival e-commerce platform Jingdong, in front of which participants bowed on their knees and offered traditional sacrificial offerings of roast pig, among other things (like cans of beer).

In the same way that Chinese farmers prayed to the gods for a good harvest in the year to come, the online retailers were praying for a bountiful and prosperous Singles’ Day. Their prayers are seen lined out in signs on the altar before them: no holding back of funds, no deductions of (online) “likes”, no adverse criticisms, no overstocks, and no refunds of money or goods.

It could very well be that the treatment of Ma and Liu as deities is nothing more than a prank, as seen by the uncomfortable smiles of people pictured attending the ceremonies. On the other hand, the acts conducted in these photographs are the same as other religious ceremonies, and by that token, have the same significance to them.

There is one key difference though: most of the figures worshipped by Chinese in such rituals are already dead.

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According to a recent Xinhua news report, only about 60 percent of all online goods purchased in China were genuine. That of course means that 40 percent of goods purchased online were either counterfeit or of questionable quality.

The report, issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, revealed that upwards of 78,000 complaints were made last year by Chinese purchasers who bought counterfeit or questionable goods. That’s a rise of 357 percent since 2013. The Chinese consumer association took up a total of 20,135 cases, 92 percent of which concerned online purchases.

Chinese online retail giant Alibaba has been trying to combat a reputation for selling fake products online. Currently lobbying to stay off a US blacklist, Alibaba is known for having publicly disputed with Chinese government officials over the issue.

Whether or not Alibaba and others have been selling counterfeit goods, it certainly hasn’t impacted online sales in China. Last year, online purchases increased 40 percent amounting to an impressive 2.8 trillion yuan.

Related:

• Singles’ Day Grows from Humble Beginnings to Massive Shopping Bonanza
• “Single’s Day” leads to explosion in e-commerce as singles celebrate
• Feud Between Taobao and the Government Over Counterfeit Goods Heats Up
• Alibaba Delivering Tea by Drone

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A recent ski promotion in Yuzhou, Henan.

When it comes to celebrating Christmas, Chinese do it in their own unique way. Celebrating the holiday has slowly caught on in China over the past decade, but it doesn’t resemble the traditions the west would recognize. Family gatherings and big meals are reserved for Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, while Christmas is taking up the spot associated with revelry, parties, and romance.

Celebrating Christmas Eve in Shenzhen with “falling snow”.

Gone are the familiar sights of the nativity scene, turkey and stuffing, egg nog, goofy seasonal sweaters, or mistletoe. In China, there are no cultural references of It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, A Miracle on 34th Street, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman.

Instead, Chinese use Christmas Even as a chance to go out and have dinner with their friends, converge in public places, and find the “meaning of Christmas” (with Chinese characteristics, of course). For example, this boisterous party in Wuhan, Hubei:

In Kunming, Yunnan, the crowd got a little rowdy when people began to spray each other with fake snow:

As they did in Guiyang, Guizhou:

But the crowd to beat all others was in Chongqing:

And then there’s the social aspect of celebrating Christmas in China. Many Chinese find themselves under pressure to find a date for this social occasion. Christmas Eve is a dreadful occasion for Chinese that are single, many of whom who took to Weibo to commiserate.

Besides large crowds and hanging out with friends, Chinese have been finding their own new ways to celebrate the holiday. Since the Chinese word for “Christmas” contains a homophone for eggs, competitive eater Pan Yizhong decided to eat 160 eggs because it “seemed like an appropriate time to eat eggs.” Pan took 40 minutes to quaff down 150 quail eggs and ten chicken eggs (below).

Eggs aren’t the only food associated with Christmas. Apple also shares a homophone with the word “peace”, and Christmas Eve is known in Chinese as the “Night of Peace”. That means apples have become a popular gift at Christmas, complete with higher prices.

Meanwhile, Santa is generally well-known in China but there might be some confusion about his defining physical trait. A Weibo contest with the hashtag #FakeChristmasBeardContest encouraged people to send in photos of themselves wearing Santa’s trademark white woolly beard. It started off like this:

Then morphed into this:

In whichever form, Christmas still has its detractors in China. In Xi’an, a university disallowed its students to take part in any festivities on Christmas Eve, instead forcing them to watch propaganda films. Over in Changsha, Hunan, university students wearing traditional Chinese clothing carried signs denouncing Christmas at a holiday event (below).

With all of these differences, Chinese culture may have lost out on the references that make Christmas what it is in the west. However, it’s difficult to learn more about Christmas in China without its characterization as a rowdy holiday getting in the way.

The Shenyang Liaoning Evening Post sent out this Weibo post that purported to list 200 appropriate songs for Christmas Eve. However, anyone opening the file is instead confronted with these words:

Do you honestly plan to spend this night listening to songs?

Photos: 8099999 (2), Jingshi Live, Guizhou University, Tianjin Culinary Picks, Weibo (1, 2, 3, 4), QQ News, xywy, telegraph

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The traditional way to celebrate Singles’ Day is to eat four youzi (fried doughsticks) and a meat bun, which represents the dot between month and day.

David Beckham met with Jack Ma last week to develop a Singles’ Day promotion. Headlines have been flying around about China’s famous “Single’s Day”, with some comparing it to Black Friday for shopping in the United States. But what exactly is Singles’ Day? And why is it so important that Jack Ma is willing to pay David Beckham to promote it?

“Singles’ Day” is something of a mash-up of Chinese superstition and Western consumerism. The holiday takes its name from the date, November 11, and is most often represented as 11/11. Visually, the date represents a bunch of sticks in a line, which gives it its Chinese name, “Bare Sticks Festival”, or 光棍节. Although there are many theories explaining the origin of Singles’ Day, the most common one is that it was concocted by lonely university students to celebrate being single and relieve themselves of the pressures of getting married and raising a family.

Chinese numerology places importance on certain dates that sound like something else. For example, January 3, 2014 (2014/1/3), is significant because it sounds close to, “Love you for the rest of my life, and the end of my years.”

While the holiday was conceived as a celebration of singlehood, November 11 has slowly gained traction as another holiday for couples to celebrate their “couplehood”. It is now commonplace for couples to reserve the date for their weddings.

Singles’ Day was eventually added to the many dates “Chinese Valentine’s Day” is celebrated, including the traditional western Valentine’s Day on February 14, White Day on March 14 when women are expected to give gifts to their partners, Qixi Festival/Girls Day/Seven Sisters Festival on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, and now Singles’ Day.

Singles’ Day has quickly become a lucrative commercial opportunity for retailers. Although singles have no one to buy gifts for, except presumably themselves, couples have each other. Taobao was the first online retailer to create Singles’ Day promotions, and it was soon copied by several other online retailers who all offer games and the promise of cash rewards or discounts. It has become so popular that many retailers now strategically remove their best selling items on Singles Day to help get rid of unwanted stock.

Photo: Chinaface, nipic, pchouse

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Since the inception of Singles’ Day in China several years ago, millions of singles throughout the country celebrate the day by trying to woo that special someone. Yet one young Guangzhou resident chose a rather unique method to express his love in the lead up to November 11: iPhones, and lots of them.

There’s been no shortage of reports detailing extravagant Singles’ Day gifts such as a new car, or giant diamonds, but one Guangzhou programmer instead opted for 99 iPhone 6s. To his credit, he organized the phones in the shape of heart before proposing to his girlfriend in front of a sizeable crowd of friends and onlookers.

The phones reportedly cost the man over RMB 500,000 (about $82,000), or roughly the equivalent of two years’ salary, Tencent News reported. Sadly, the grand gesture was lost on the woman, who rejected his proposal.

Thankfully, demand for the new iPhone remains high in China, so he shouldn’t have too much trouble reselling them as one Weibo user suggested. Others simply dismissed the guy’s move as stupid. One user, 韵母和韵父, asked “How many kidneys did it take to buy those phones?” referring to earlier reports of a young man selling his own kidney to buy an iPhone. Another user wrote, ” 99 kidneys!”

For those who might be wondering how November 11th was chosen as Singles’ Day, the answer resides in the four lonely “1”s that form the date: 11/11.

 Photos: Weibo 

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The report “The 2013 China Singles Perspective” stated that there are 74.3 “leftover women” for every 100 “leftover men” in Shenzhen.  Although the ratio of female to male residents of the city was once 7:1, men now outnumber women by 1.18 to 1. Men have outnumbered women since late 2010.

But a lack of available members of the opposite sex is not the only reason so many people are single in Guangdong. Baihe.com, China’s most famous matchmaking website, claims that the growing number of single people also has something to do with particular living customs and work pressure.

A survey done by the website shows that a fast-paced lifestyle makes single people in Guangdong too busy to date, China Radio International reported.

Although the number of men unable to find a marriage partner is known to be a major social time bomb , the issue of leftover women also gets a great deal of media attention.

As well as being a day during which single people can celebrate and give each other gifts, November 11 has established itself as China’s busiest day for e-commerce in recent years.

#Correction: In the second paragraph, we had said men outnumber women by 118 to 1. Of course, we meant 1.18 to 1.

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