1ITS NOT REALLY JUST FOR SINGLE PEOPLEShare on TwitterMore than 60% of Chinese consumers who plan to buy online on Singles Day are actually married, while about a quarter are single, according to a survey by Nielsen N.V., a data provider.GETTY IMAGES 2THE BARGAIN-BASEMENT DEALS STARTED WELL BEFORE NOV. 11Some sellers on Alibabas marketplaces have been offering pre-sales since Oct. 15, allowing shoppers to pre-order select discounted goods and complete their payments on Nov. 11. Chinese rival JD.com has a 12-day sales event that began Nov. 1, and calls this entire period Singles Day. Those arrangements make the companies Singles Day numbers appear bigger than they actually are. Investors and analysts, take note.CARLOS BARRIA 3YOU WONT FIND THE IPHONE 6 AT HALF PRICEWhile 27,000 retailers and brands on Alibabas Tmall retail shopping platform are offering Singles Day discounts this year, Apple and Burberry are not among those names andJapanese house-ware and clothing retailer Mujialso isnt cutting prices. Instead, Apple and Muji are offering buyers coupons that can be used for future purchases, while Burberry is selling special-edition scarf and perfume on Nov. 11, an Alibaba spokesman said.ZUMA PRESS 4SINGLES DAY ISN'T A REAL HOLIDAYSingle people in China first coined the term as an anti-Valentines Day, a time for the lonely hearts to celebrate their single status. In 2009, Alibaba turned it into the online shopping extravaganza it is now, a way to drive sales to its shopping sites during the slow retail period before the Christmas season.REUTERS 5ITS NO LONGER ONLY FOR SHOPPERS IN CHINAAlibaba says that this year, shoppers in some 200 countries and regions will be able to buy more than one million products offered at steep discounts by Chinese and international retailers on its international marketplaces, Tmall Global and AliExpress.

BEIJING -- Turkey Day and Santa Claus might spur Americans to shop till they drop, but China's hundreds of millions of online shoppers have their own reason to blow vast sums of hard-earned cash online.Weeks before Americans splurge on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, China is in the midst of what has become the biggest online shopping bonanza on the planet: Singles Day. The recently invented holiday falls on Nov. 11 (11/11 -- get it?), and it originally gave the country's youth a chance to revel in socially stigmatized singledom.But in recent years theChinese e-commerce behemoth Alibabahas used steep discounts on its retail websites to turn the day into a shopping event that dwarfs its American and international counterparts.Here are some things you might not know about China's Singles Day online shopping spree:1. Alibaba single-handedly created the biggest online shopping day on the planet.Celebrations of Singles Day have been aroundsince the 1990s, but it wasnt until Alibaba decided to offer steep Singles Day discounts in 2009 that the e-commerce bonanza was birthed, and in just five years the event has become the largest online shopping spree in the world. Alibabatold Tech in Asiathat they werent trying to exploit youth hoping to shop off their singledom sorrows -- it just happens to be a catchy date that falls during a shopping lull between major Chinese holidays.

An Alibaba retailer tracks the millions in transactions on Singles Day. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images.)

2. People are spending way more money than you can possibly imagine.Alibaba reported that customers on its retail sitesspent $2 billion in the first hourof Singles Day this year, almost equal to total online shopping by Americans on Cyber Monday. By midnight on Tuesday, Alibaba had reportedly raked in $9.3 billion in sales, four times the amount spent online during Cyber Monday in the U.S. and around three-quarters of all retail sales made at brick-and-mortar stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday combined.3. PR people at Alibaba sites like to measure the holiday in underwear.The PR team fromTmall.com, Alibaba's main business-to-consumer retail site, has a strange tendency of bragging about thesheer mass of underwear soldduring Singles Day. Last year the team reported that during the first hour of sales, the 2 million pieces of underwear sold would span 1,864 miles if laid end to end, and the 1.6 million bras sold would stack up to three times the height of Mount Everest.

Adam Dean/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

4. Chinas brands are emerging as the biggest winners this year.Midway through the day,Alibaba reportedthat four of the top five brands as measured by gross merchandise volume were Chinese. At the top of the list was Xiaomi, the red-hot Chinese smartphone brand headed by ex-Googler Hugo Barra. Barra reported via hisTwitter accountthat by the middle of the day, Xiaomi had sold 720,000 phones and topped $163 million in sales. The one non-Chinese brand in Alibabas top five was Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo.5. Alibaba and retailers throw around huge amounts of money gearing up for the eventLast year Alibabatripled spendingon sales and marketing between the third quarter and the fourth quarter (when Singles Day falls). That money goes to web promotions,free mobile data for its customersand funky promotional videos like the one below. Retailers also take onenormous marketing, inventory and overtime coststo participate, all while competing with super-low prices on all goods. Its an arms race that has many retailers worn out, but the hype and allure of drawing in new customers keeps bringing in more retailers.6. Sites like Amazon are trying to get a bite of the actionAlibaba conjured the shopping holiday out of thin air, but other online retailers have been trying to get a piece of the action for years. Amazon has been trying to claw its way into Chinese markets for a long time, and this year its using its international shopping platforms as an enticement for Singles Day shoppers: Chinese shoppers normally relegated to the more limited selection onAmazon.cnwill be able tomake purchasesoff of Chinas U.S. and international sites, with orders delivered as fast as three days.