If you haven’t heard about it, November 11th has been declared “Singles-Day” in China (the date is 11/11, like a group of single people). It is celebrated with a single activity: on-line shopping. The recent Singles-Day sales of $17.8 billion broke previous records by a huge margin. Forbes magazine said it exceeded an entire year of e-commerce for the nation of Brazil.
If I order something on-line in the West, it is usually delivered to my doorstep by a big brown truck. But package delivery is very different in China. Instead of large trucks and warehouses, packages are carried all over town by thousands of scooters and three-wheelers. They are then piled on the sidewalk at the gate behind our school:
alongside the street:
or sometimes, underneath a temporary canopy:
Just in case you are wondering if such a large singles-day sales total is legitimate, here is picture that I took this afternoon of some deliveries in front of our apartment complex:
If every apartment complex in China has a pile like this, I may have to agree with the numbers!
Wow – this is really fascinating… neat to see the reality of the numbers.