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Alibaba Group broke the 10 billion yuan ($1.44 billion) sales threshold within the first two minutes and five seconds after the e-commerce on Sunday giant kicked off the 10th year of its iconic Double 11 shopping gala.

The speed of the sales broke last year’s record of three minutes and one second, paving the way for an online shopping spree that the e-commerce giant envisions will be the largest ever in scale and reach.

© Image | Google

Shoppers from home and abroad swarmed to Alibaba’s diverse arms, including the Tmall online site, Fliggy travel agency, as well as delivery service Ele.me, and scooped up everything from electronic devices and imported cosmetics to flight tickets and discounted delicacies.

Alibaba hosted a star-studded gala on Saturday night in Shanghai, featuring superstar singer Mariah Carey and Cirque du Soleil to pump sales.

© Image | Google

 

Pre-sales prior to the event were brisk, with 33 brands on Tmall reporting 100 million-yuan worth of pre-orders, the company said. Down payments for consumer electronics on Tmall have jumped nearly six-fold year-on-year, with popular brands including Apple, Huawei, Siemens, and Dyson.

 

Imported goods are set to hog the Nov 11 limelight, with Tmall Global, the dedicated cross-border portal, providing 3,700 categories of foreign merchandise from 75 countries and regions on its platform. In the first minutes of midnight trading, the top three destinations for imported goods were Japan, the United States, and South Korea.

 

© Image | Google

The trend was predicted by research from global consultancy Oliver Wyman, which said that around 57 percent of surveyed consumers intended to buy overseas goods and such sales would make up one-third of total consumer spending.

A new element in this year’s online shopping spree is the participation of local services. Ele.me’s on-demand platform will provide delivery services for select Starbucks stores in 11 Chinese cities, including full-service coverage in Beijing and Shanghai. In addition, 150,000 merchant partners of Koubei will offer half-price discounts on catering, beauty and hair salons and karaoke bars.

Nov 11 debuted in 2009 as an online antidote to the sentimentality surrounding Valentine’s Day. It takes its name from the way the date is written numerically as 1111, which resembles “bare branches,” a local expression for the unattached.

 

© Image | Google

 

Today, Nov 11 has become a default date for people to snap up things and binge on entertainment shows. Alibaba is also using the occasion to test the limits of its cloud computing, delivery, and payment capabilities, as well as try out new business endeavors that are uprooting traditional retail.

 

To that end, Alibaba teams fanned out across the nation before the event to help outlets — some 200,000 mom-and-pop convenient stores-upgrade their computer systems.

 

Another 200,000 smart stores in China across the apparel, fast-moving consumer goods, beauty products, automobile, and home decor industries will help boost traffic to offline and online shopping destinations.

 

© Image | Google

 

At a countdown ceremony on Oct 19 in Beijing, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said the festival’s growth and its evolution “showcases the development of the Alibaba ecosystem over time, expanding well beyond e-commerce”.

 

Gross merchandise volume generated this year-albeit is projected to hit another record high but will no longer be the focus as the event evolves from a pure discounting occasion to a test-bed for new commerce initiatives and emerging technologies, said Wang Xiaofeng, senior analyst of Forrester.

 

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba

 © Image | Google

“We expect to see Alibaba expand its business models through the buy online, pick up in-store new retail model, partnerships such as Fliggy and Singapore Airlines, as well as technologies internationally, like the chatbot being adopted on the Lazada portal,” Wang said.

 

The annual 24-hour event clocked up $25.3 billion last year, eclipsing counterpart promotional activities of Black Friday and Cyber Monday of the United States combined.

Winter is coming, and temperatures are about to drop sharply in most cities in China. Many people in northern areas have put on their heavy winter clothes to resist the cold, including qiuku, also called long underwear or long johns in English.

Traditional qiuku in China

 

Long underwear is a style of two-piece underwear with long legs and sleeves normally worn during cold weather. Due to its pronunciation in Chinese, people call it jokingly “chill cool”.

 

When it gets colder, wearing one pair of trousers is not enough, so people will wear another pair of close-fitting trousers under the outside one.

 

Ten years ago, Su Mang, chief editor of Bazaar magazine, claimed long underwear compromised fashion. “I never allow people around me to wear long underwear,” Su said on a talk show.

 

As a result, those who cannot bear the cold and bow their heads to long underwear always feel that they are at the bottom of the fashion food chain.

 

Young people in China believe only grandmothers wear long underwear and refuse to wear it, no matter how cold it is.

 

In fact, long underwear was an imported product. It was introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

 

King Henry VIII of England wears tight wool breeches with pointed shoes.

 

Hundreds of years ago in England, the fashion trend of long underwear began. In the Tudor Dynasty of the 16th century, King Henry VIII liked to wear tight wool breeches with pointed shoes, becoming a fashion icon. Noble people tried to follow the trend.

 

In 1915, Canadian Frank Stanfield formally applied for a patent on long underwear. After that, long underwear became popular consumer goods for ordinary people.

 

Marilyn Monroe wears long underwear.

American soldiers wear long underwear during the World War II.

 

In recent years, the discussion about whether to wear long underwear or not has been raging. People have their own reasons and want to convince others.

 

Many young people refuse to wear long underwear for the reason that they are out of date and not fashionable enough. However, more people appear to be realizing the importance of long underwear, as it can keep you warm and free of illness.

 

Fashion icons, like actress Jing Tian and singer Li Jian, wear it. Many styles of long underwear, like leggings, are good-looking and useful for keeping warm.

 

Chinese actor Jing Tian wears long underwear under her dress. 

 

Actor Michael Fassbender wears long underwear in a film.

 

Do not wait until you get cold to wear long underwear. Do it in advance and save yourself a chill. Or ignore these if you are still hiding from mosquitos. 

 

Follow HACOS for daily updates 

Remember to Star us and stay tuned!

 

Last weekend, Weibo saw the rise of a popular post.

“Chinese team iG（Invictus Gaming）won the S8 World Championship in the League of Legends”.

The head of this company is Wang Sicong, who is the son of Wang Jianlin, a rich property tycoon in China. 

Wanda is the largest commercial property group in China owned by Wang Jianlin, operating more than 100 Wanda Plaza shopping malls across the nation.

But although this victory received quite a bit of attention, that’s not all: Wang Sicong was caught shoving a hot dog into his mouth at the League of Legends event. 

A picture of his awkward ‘hot dog’ moment, snapped by an unknown web user, quickly set the Chinese social media alight.

Online users were both surprised and amused by his eating manner and shared the picture on Weibo. Even dailymail reported about it.

As one would expect in this day and age, numerous memes emerged almost instantly.

At first, netizens just made memes, and then later, all kinds of funny things came of it.  Comic, GIFs, I have to say these netizens are so genius.

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Photo credit： Weibo@大绵羊BOBO

Even the eye chart is out…

 

   

 

Even Taobao sellers began to sell phone cases and clothing items with his designed meme on them.

 

 

And games..

 

Apparently, the picture became so popular that Wang Sicong had to beg people not to circulate it. 

“Can you not share the picture of me eating hot dog anymore?!” 

he wrote on his Weibo account, which has 29 million followers.

 

But that didn’t stop web users from continuing to mock him.

On Nov 6th, in order to celebrate his team winning the game, he announced a lottery in which 113 people were given RMB 10,000 each, in cash.

 

Shanghai as a great urban city, you can find everything you knew and everything you never known before. And of course also here are so many interesting events and activities. 

 

• If you like coffee, would you like to have a coffee date this December?

• If you like chocolate, would you like to enjoy a chocolate feast before the Christmas?

• If you are a barista, would you like to meet some new friends here?

• If you like tattoo, would you like to have one more?

This December 9~11 in Shanghai New International Expo Center, a great event gathering all these items together and to show you an amazing party. That is CAFEEX & CHOCEX 2018. 80+ specialty coffee shops and chocolatiers from all over the world participated. 10+ experts and professionals in coffee and chocolate will deliver speech to share their own experiences and knowledge. 

2018 Word Cafe Expo Shanghai (Cafeex)

2018 World Choc Expo Shanghai (CHOCEX)

And The story of Café—coffee & chocolate festival

 

TIME

09-11/12/2018

 

LOCATION

Shanghai New International Expo Center (SNIEC) 

Organized by Chinno Exhibitions

 

Part of the coffee exhibitos

Part of the chocolate exhibitors

Activities

WSCF 2018 – World Specialty Coffee & Cacao Forum

 

WBTC 2018–World Barista Tattoo Championship

 

Chocolate Workshop

 

Bean-to-bar Chocolate Area

Now surprise time, we got you FREE TICKETS!

Let’s have a special coffee & chocolate date in this winter! 

Please  star HACOS official WeChat account, leave your screenshot, name and phone no. to us.

 

We will choose the top 50 to present a free ticket for this expo. And what’s more, you would get some Christmas gift with the ticket during the show!

See you this December in 

CAFEEX & CHOCEX 2018!