November 11, known as “Singles Day”, has grown into China’s and possibly the world’s     1    (busy) online shopping day. Singles Day     2    (create) by Chinese college students in the 1990s as     3     version of Valentine’s Day for people without romantic partners. On that day, unattached young people would treat each other to dinner or give gifts to chase that special someone     4    (end) their single status. That gift-giving helped to turn     5     into a major shopping event as sellers saw a marketing opportunity and launched Singles Day sales. It is China’s     6    (respond) to Cyber Monday in the US, the day after Thanksgiving weekend,       7     online shopping for Christmas begins.

Last year,     8    (businessman) on Taobao and Tmall.com took in about $3 billion on Singles Day. This figure exceeded the total of $1.25 billion that U.S. online business earned on Cyber Monday,     9    (make) Singles Day the biggest e­commerce sales day on record. China has the biggest population of online users in the world,     10     about 538 million people online. Now, it follows the U.S. and Japan in online spending and is forecasted to rise to first place as early as this year.