雙十一誕生史 從光棍節到購物狂歡

For a country where many major holidays can be traced back thousands of years, Singles Day is a refreshingly recent invention. No one is quite sure exactly who first thought it up, but it definitely emerged as a student tradition in the mid-1990s. The most widely-accepted story is that it emerged from the dorms of Nanjing University in 1993 when four single male students got together to discuss how to break free of the loneliness and monotony of single life. One suggested that because of the ones in the date, November 11 would be a good day on which to organize activities for singles.

中國的很多傳統節日都可以追溯到上千年以前，但光混節卻是個最近幾年才興起的節日。沒人能確切說出是誰先想出了這個節日，但能夠肯定的是它最早出現在上世紀九十年代中期，是大學生們的一項傳統。大家公認的說法是，1993年在南京大學的宿舍裏，有4個單身男生聚在一起討論如何擺脫單身生活的孤獨和乏味時，其中一個建議說11月11日恰好是四個數字1組成的，就像4個光棍，所以這天可能會是個爲光棍們組織活動的好日子。

What started as an idea executed by a small group of friends gradually became a university tradition. Singles Day grew into something like the anti-Valentines day, a day China’s single young people – at first just men, but later single women adopted the tradition as well – could use as an excuse to get together and do fun stuff like visit karaoke bars together.

就這樣，只是由幾個朋友想出來的主意慢慢變成了大學裏的一項傳統。光棍節，逐漸發展成一個與情人節相對的節日，一開始是單身男性的節日，後來單身女性也加入其中，把它當做一個和朋友聚餐玩樂的節日。

The fact that the holiday went from local to national in less than two decades likely has a lot to do with China’s demographics and its culture. The country has a serious gender gap – by 2020 it will have 35 million more men than it does women. And because there’s immense family pressure on many young Chinese men and women to find a suitable partner and marry young, young people of both genders embraced the holiday as a kind of release.

光棍節能在短短二十多年的時間裏從一個小衆節日成爲一個全國範圍內的節日和中國的人口特點及文化是分不開的。中國的男女比例差異較大，到2020年男性人口將比女性人口多出3500萬。而很多年輕人又承受着來自家庭的“催婚”壓力，所以單身男性和女性都把光棍節看做是一個解脫的節日。

I say the holiday was about being with friends and having fun because, now, Singles Day is about shopping – mostly online shopping. How did an underground youth holiday go corporate? It’s a long story, but the short answer is Alibaba.

在以前，光棍節就是和朋友們一起吃喝玩，可現在說到光棍節，讓人想到的就是網購。那麼，年輕人的一個節日怎麼就走向商業化了呢？這說起來話長，但簡單說原因就是阿里巴巴。

By the late 2000s, Singles Day was well known enough that most of China’s internet users – who skew young and urban – were familiar with it. There might have been some small shops online and offline offering sales on that day earlier, but no major company bought into the holiday until Alibaba launched its first Singles Day online sale in 2009.

二

十一世紀的頭幾年裏，中國大多數網民已經熟知光棍節了。那時候在這天到來之前，會有規模較小的網上商店以及線下的實體店舉行打折活動，但一直沒有較大的公司參與，直到2009年阿里巴巴第一次在光棍節舉行網購活動。

In that first year, Alibaba was the only major ecommerce company to offer a sale, and it featured just 27 brands offering discounts via its Tmall marketplace. The sale was definitely successful, but it wasn’t enough to redefine the holiday on its own.

在這第一年裏，只有阿里巴巴一家電商企業舉行了打折活動，天貓上也只有27家品牌參與活動，但銷售額相當可觀。不過這依然不足以重新定義這個節日。

2010 changed things, though. Alibaba went bigger, offering more brands and deeper discounts. But other companies had noticed the potential of the 2009 sales bonanza and decided to follow suit. Ecommerce platforms like JD had their first major Singles Day sales in 2010, and overnight Singles Day went from a Tmall sale to something that was beginning to look like Cyber Monday in some western countries.2010年改變開始了。

阿里巴巴日益壯大，彙集了更多的品牌、提供了更大的折扣。其他商家也在看到阿里巴巴09年的成功後決定效仿。比如電商平臺京東2010年第一次在光棍節舉行促銷活動。就這樣，光棍節似乎在一夜之間從天貓購物節開始變的有點像西方國家的網購星期一（在美國，商店通常在星期一列出大折扣的商品，發佈在網上，爲了吸引顧客）了。

Over the next few years, Alibaba, JD, and other Chinese ecommerce players all expanded their one-day discounts, and sales grew exponentially. On Singles Day in 2012, for example, Alibaba’s marketplaces, Taobao and Tmall, did about US$3 billion in sales. In 2013 that number nearly doubled, and Chinese shoppers had obliterated America’s Cyber Monday spending records in just the first few hours of the sale. And it’s only getting bigger.

接下來的幾年裏，阿里巴巴、京東等各大電商企業都加大了在光棍節當天的促銷範圍和力度，銷售額也成倍增長。2012年的光棍節，阿里巴巴旗下的淘寶和天貓總銷售額達30億美元。2013年該數字翻了一番，中國網購買家僅頭幾個小時的銷售額就破了美國網購星期一的記錄。而且，這個數字只會越來越大。

This year’s Singles Day online shopping bonanza is likely to break all the records set last year. If Alibaba can keep its pace, it may do more than US$10 billion in sales in 24 hours. That’s already pretty crazy, but the next step for Singles Day may be for it to set foot outside of the Middle Kingdom. World, meet Singles Day.

今年的光棍節網購狂歡必會打破去年的記錄。按這個勢頭，阿里巴巴今年在24小時內的銷售額可達100億美元以上。這已經夠瘋狂了，但阿里巴巴並不滿足於此，而是決定把光棍節的網購狂歡帶向全世界。

In an article about the company’s plans for Singles Day, Tmall CEO Wang Yulei wrote that Alibaba’s “core keyword” this year is globalization:

天貓CEO王煜磊在一篇有關光棍節計劃的文章中提到了阿里巴巴今年網購狂歡的關鍵詞“全球化”。

We want consumers to be able to buy products from all over the world, and Chinese people all across the world to be able to buy the products they need.

“我們想讓消費者買到世界各地的商品，也想讓世界各地的中國人都能買到他們需要的東西。”

Amazon China, too, is making moves towards taking the holiday global. Even JD is looking at the international market in the long run.

亞馬遜中國也計劃在光棍節的促銷活動中打“國際牌”。連京東也開始從長遠考慮國際市場。

Of course, there’s still a long way to go before Singles Day is a truly global phenomenon, and it may never get there.

當然讓光棍節的網購狂歡全球化可能還需要走一段很長的路，也有可能永遠不會全球化。

But the commercial aspects of the holiday are already big enough to be of interest to the global Chinese diaspora, and where it spreads from there is anyone’s guess.

但是光棍節的狂歡現在已經擴展到了中國的華人，而它將繼續向哪裏擴展，沒人猜得到。