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Singles' Day is China's Cyber Monday, Only Lonelier

Singles' Day is China's Cyber Monday, Only Lonelier
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Assignment Editor, HuffPost

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People sit on a bench inside a shopping mall using their tablet computer and smartphone in Beijing, China Monday, Aug. 19, 2013. Many famous Chinese - from pop stars to scholars, journalists to business tycoons - have amassed substantial online followings, and these larger-than-life personalities don?t always hew to the Communist Party line. Now Beijing is tightening its grip on China?s already heavily restricted Internet by making influential microbloggers uncomfortable when they post material the government doesn?t like. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In the United States, the lonely have Reddit and cats. In China, they have Singles' Day, which falls on Nov. 11 -- 11.11, the four ones symbolizing "bare branches," Chinese slang for bachelors. Thought to have originated about 20 years ago as a joke on college campuses, Singles' Day was once an occasion for confessing one's feelings to that special someone. But since 2010, online retailers have transformed the holiday, also known as "Double 11," into an epic online shopping extravagazna akin to America's Cyber Monday.

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