中国的"光棍节"成了世界上最大的网上购物日

There are too many men in China.

中国人实在太多了。

That’s not the complaint of a love hungry young Chinese bachelor, but rather a statistical fact: by the year 2020, approximately 30 million more men will reach adulthood and enter the mating market than women. That may not make Chinese men happy, but it’s become a huge annual boost to China’s online retailers. How? Back in the early 1990s, Chinese singles created a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day called Singles’ Day, an annual celebration of bachelorhood or bachelorettehood taking place on November 11. (numerically, 11/11, the date of lonely “1s.”)

这不是在埋怨年轻中国单身汉对爱情的渴望，它只是一个统计学上的事实：2020年之前，将会成年并进入婚配市场的男性大约比女性多三千万。这个数据大概不会让中国男人感到开心，但是对于中国在线零售商来说，它带来了一年一度的销量剧增。这是怎么发生的呢？时间回溯到上世纪90年代初期，中国的单身人士发明了一种与情人节相反的节日叫做光棍节，一个在每年11月11日（从数字角度来说，11/11，也就是孤独的“1”的集合的日期）对单身和单身生活的庆祝。

Singles’ Day has since evolved into a major shopping holiday, similar to Black Friday or Cyber Monday here in the U.S. And just as U.S. corporations like Hallmark adopted Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to boost sales, Chinese online retailers like Alibaba, a massive online marketplace, have embraced the cultural phenomenon that is Singles’ Day.

自此以后，光棍节就渐渐演变成了一个主要的购物节日，类似于美国的黑色星期五，以及黑色星期五之后的网购星期一（在美国标志着感恩节至圣诞节之间网络购物旺季的开始）。而且正如美国诸如贺曼之类的公司把情人节当做提高销量的好机会，中国诸如阿里巴巴（一个大型的线上市场）之类的在线零售商已经张开双手拥抱了光棍节这个文化现象。

And that embrace comes with good reason. China’s Alibaba online marketplace alone reported over $9 billion in sales on Tuesday, skyrocketing past the company’s previous Singles’ Day record of about $5.9 billion, MarketWatch reports. Those are stunning numbers — by comparison, U.S. consumers spent just $1.2 billion online during Black Friday last year, according to ComScore, and another $2.29 billion during Cyber Monday, per Adobe Systems. (Factoring in physical store sales, total Black Friday weekend spending in the U.S. last year was a hair over $57 billion.) Those numbers come just two months after Alibaba went public in a $25 billion U.S.-based public offering, which has since hit the record books as the world’s biggest-ever IPO.

这种拥抱不是没有收获的。据市场观察报道（MarketWatch），在星期二，中国的阿里巴巴在线市场单独一家就报告了超过90亿美元的销售额，远远超过了这家公司在上个光棍节约59亿美元的销量，这些都是非常惊人的数据——因为相比较而言，康姆斯科公司（comScore）的数据显示，根据每个奥多比系统的用户，美国的消费者在去年黑色星期五期间的在线消费只有12亿美元，在网购星期一期间，消费了另外的22.9亿美元（加上实体店销售额，去年美国整个黑色星期五周末消费略超过570亿美元）。 而就在两个月前，阿里巴巴首次上市，募集到250亿的美国资本，作为世界最大的独立上市公司打破了点击记录。

Singles’ Day is a holiday that speaks to the rapidly growing purchasing power of China’s middle class as well as a culture increasingly focused on the acquisition of material wealth. Accordingly, Singles’ Day has spawned a bevy of outlandish tales that redefine consumerism — one Chinese man, in preparation for Singles’ Day, proposed to his girlfriend in a heart-shaped ring of 99 iPhone 6s that cost about $82,000, reports the Nanfang. The woman rejected his proposal.

光棍节是一个证明了中国中产阶级飞速增长的购买力的节日，也是一种日益在关注物质财富的获得的文化。相应的光棍节也产生了一批奇闻怪谈，重新定义了消费主义——有一个中国男人，为了准备即将到来的光棍节，花费了大约82000美元，用99部苹果6s摆成的心形环向他的女朋友求婚。到女方拒绝了他的求婚。

But the Singles’ Day windfall for Chinese retailers like Alibaba is also an accident of China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1979. The policy led many Chinese—who historically have often preferred to have boys—to take advantage of cheap ultrasound technology that has allowed women to determine the sex of their child in early pregnancy, offering them the option to continue or terminate pregnancies based on gender. The resulting gender imbalance has actually led many of China’s surplus men (and some women as well) to view Singles’ Day as a chance to celebrate what they hope could be the last day of singledom—hence much of the expensive buying, which is tied to gift-giving to woo significant others.

但是对于如阿里巴巴的中国零售商来说，光棍节的意外之财也是中国在1979年制定的独生子女政策的意外影响。这个政策导致很多中国人——那些由于历史原因经常更倾向于得到儿子的——利用了低级的超声波技术，因而女人得以在怀孕早期就确定他们的孩子的性别，也有了继续或者终止这次怀孕的选择。结果造成的男女性别不平衡实际上已经导致很多中国的剩男（有些剩女也是）将光棍节当成一次机会，庆祝希望中的单身的最后一天——因此，要给那个重要的人求爱，这就造成了很多高昂的消费。

Alibaba, which acts as a bazaar for online merchants, has taken advantage to a remarkable extent of growing disposable incomes in China. This year, the company posted the largest initial public offering at $25 billion, launching off its rapid growth in China.

阿里巴巴作为在线商家的集市，已经把中国不断增长的消费收入利用到了淋漓尽致的程度。今年，这家公司发布了最大的首次公开募股250亿美元，加快了它在中国的飞速发展。