My New Favourite Holiday is The Chinese Holiday, “Single’s Day” Since I Don’t Like Valentine’s Day

But As Usual, it’s All About Money

Robin Christine Honigsberg
2 min readNov 11, 2021

A single Chinese woman dressed in a white hoodie, jean jacket and yellow winter hat, pulling down her sunglasses and smiling standing on rocky ground in the foreground; rocky ground and a body of water is the background
Photo by Jaddy Liu on Unsplash

According to Google,https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=singles+day+in+china&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB84Dmv5H0AhUniOAKHWd4BPoQBSgAegQIARAx&biw=1303&bih=709&dpr=1, since the 1990s, November 11 has been China’s unofficial “Singles Day Holiday”, a commercial holiday that celebrates single people not currently in a relationship and/or celebrates being human.

November 11 was chosen as the date to celebrate “Double 11”, another name for the unofficial holiday, because of the four ones that make up the date.

According to the online site National Today,https://nationaltoday.com/singles-day/, the four ones look like four individual sticks.

Four single males in China who attended Nanjing University invented the unofficial holiday to celebrate instead of mourn being single.

It’s essentially the opposite of Valentine’s Day, a day I don’t particularly like.

But like Valentine’s day, the true meaning behind “Single’s Day” was commercialized and has become the biggest shopping day of the year. According to Google, https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=What+holiday+is+November+11+in+China%3F&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjWvMPX-JD0AhUiTd8KHVu0D58Qzmd6BAghEAU&biw=1303&bih=709&dpr=1, the massive commercialization of the day is because of Jack Ma, the Alibaba CEO.

So far as I can tell, it’s just another day for single people to splurge on expensive items they don’t need under the guise of celebrating being single (or human).

I guess that means that I celebrate being single (and human) every week!

Robin Christine Honigsberg

Author of “Dysfunctional Me.” Associate Editor & Social Media Manager at wordswelljournal.org. Sensitive eccentric. Medium Editor-“AYOT.”