Singles Day: How a Student Joke Became the World’s Biggest Shopping Day

Wednesday is 11 November. In Germany and Austria, carnival season begins at 11:11, and in many places children carry lanterns for St Martin’s Day. In China, the same date stands for something else. It is Singles Day, the day for single people. And it is now the world’s biggest shopping day.

How a student joke became a festival with billions in sales, how it reached Europe and why, outdoors, it matters far less whether you are travelling alone or with someone else: that is the story told here. The equipment for it comes in both sizes.

The story people tell took place in 1993 at Nanjing University. Four students shared a room in the residence, none of them had a girlfriend, and they looked for a day on which to celebrate that rather than complain about it. They chose 11 November. The date consists of four ones. And a one looks like a single stick.

In colloquial Chinese, a man without a partner is called guanggun, a bare branch. That is where the day gets its name: Guanggun Jie, the festival of the bare branches. No one knows whether the four students from the residence really existed. The author Alec Ash, who lived in China for years and wrote about this generation, explicitly treats the story as an origin myth. The idea stuck nonetheless.

From Nanjing, the day spread to other universities. With the graduates, it reached offices and cities. It became the counterpart to Valentine’s Day: a celebration that needs no one else to spend it with.

Outdoors, anyone who likes heading out alone knows the feeling. A one-person tent weighs less than one for two, goes up faster and needs only the space you occupy yourself. And if there is no second hand to warm, you take heated gloves.

Being alone in a tent has one limitation: the porch of a one-person tent is small. If you want to keep a lot of luggage dry, a two-person tent is the better choice, even when you are alone.

The student tradition became a business in 2009. On its Taobao Mall platform, now called Tmall, Alibaba declared 11 November a discount day. According to the company, 27 retailers took part the first time. The aim was modest: to show people in China that shopping online was worthwhile.

The story behind it was obvious. If you are alone, you buy yourself something on this day. It worked faster than expected. In 2010, retailers already generated almost one billion yuan in 24 hours, according to Alec Ash, and in 2016 they generated 121 billion yuan, according to his figures.

In 2021, Alibaba named a total figure for the last time: 540.3 billion yuan in gross merchandise value, then around 84 billion US dollars. One day had become eleven. The period from 1 to 11 November was counted, and 290,000 brands took part.

Buying yourself something sounds like luxury. Outdoors, it is often simply sensible, for example when choosing the mat beneath your sleeping bag. The Exped MegaMat Duo is a double mat designed for couples. According to the product description, it is also suitable as a generous single mat. If you sleep alone, you have the whole bed to yourself.

After that, things became quieter, at least in terms of the figures. In 2022, Alibaba and its competitor JD.com kept their results private, reported the South China Morning Post. Since then, data companies have done the calculations. In 2025, many platforms began the festival as early as the first half of October, earlier than ever, reported the news agency Reuters.

In the end, the Chinese analysis company Syntun counted 1.695 trillion yuan, equivalent to around 238 billion US dollars. This combines shopping platforms, instant-delivery services and group purchases, 14.2 per cent more than the previous year.

It is barely still a festival for singles. 11 November is the final point of a discount period lasting weeks. The core has nevertheless remained: people buy for themselves.

The day reached Europe through the internet. By 2017 at the latest, Alibaba was calling it the “11.11 Global Shopping Festival”, and through the international platform AliExpress, people in Europe could order too. Retailers in Europe adopted the date.

Surveys show how significant the day has become here. In Germany, a Boston Consulting Group survey from October 2025 found that three out of four people planned to use one of the big promotional dates at the end of the year: Singles Day, Black Friday or Cyber Monday. For Singles Day 2025, the Austrian Retail Association expected spending of around 120 million euros and anticipated that one in four people in the country would go hunting for bargains. In Switzerland, the deals app Profital and the Swiss Retail Federation surveyed around 2,800 of the app’s users in 2024. On average, they planned to spend 304 francs on Singles Day.

Black Friday is still bigger in Europe. Singles Day comes earlier, though, right in the period when many people bring their winter gear down from the attic and realise that a glove is missing.

For our Glow Season, we moved Singles Day outdoors: five locations, two strangers at each one. They stand at the kebab stand, sit outside the launderette, meet at the bar, wait at the drag lift and set up camp at the winter tent. Each pair wears two looks that go together. Until Wednesday evening, the Glow Season Singles page shows all five locations. Afterwards, the same link leads to the full Glow Season.

The most striking example is at the drag lift. There, both are wearing the same ski jacket from Schöffel: she wears the Zandwel women’s, he the Zandwel men’s. A matching look, without either of them asking the other. Appropriate for the location: a drag lift is one of the few places where two strangers stand shoulder to shoulder for a few minutes, whether they want to or not.

At the launderette, it is about the smallest pair there is. Somewhere between the drum and the laundry basket, every sock loses its partner at some point. A twin pack takes away the sting. Two identical pairs mean four socks that can be mixed and matched, and losing one is no longer a disaster.

To be honest: a twin pack is only worthwhile if you really wear both pairs. Otherwise, it is just one more sock that can disappear.

At the winter tent, both have the same sleeping bag with them, the Deuter Orbit SQ. It has a rectangular cut like a blanket and can be fully opened. According to the manufacturer, you can connect it to a second Orbit SQ to make a double sleeping bag. Two singles, one zip. And if it does not work, each person can unzip their half again.

There is one limitation: with the same filling, a rectangular sleeping bag is usually less warm than a mummy sleeping bag because more air remains around the shoulders and feet. The MegaMat Duo is also thick and heavy, more suited to car camping than carrying in a rucksack. For a winter tour with luggage on your back, both are the wrong choice; for a night by the lake, they are the more comfortable one.

And then there is the pair that gets separated most often. At the kebab stand, she is wearing the Witzia beanie from Barts. Barts designed the gloves in the range to mix and match, made from soft, stretchy yarn with a fluffy lining. Anyone walking a trail in winter will eventually see one: the single glove someone has placed on a fence post so its owner can find it on the way back.

In China, the day is an economic event that keeps entire data companies busy. In Europe, it is a date shortly before Black Friday when many retailers offer discounts. A discount does not turn something you do not need into a good purchase, however. The question is worth asking on every promotional day, including this one.

In the evening, lanterns once again move through the streets. They honour a man who cut his cloak in two with his sword to warm a freezing stranger: St Martin. That, too, is one way to spend 11 November: two people beneath one piece of fabric.