By Matthew Bossons

The Explainer is where we explain an aspect of Chinese life. Simple. So now you know.

Today is ‘Double 12,’ the follow-up to last month’s record-breaking Singles Day – the steroid-pumped Chinese version of Black Friday.

The online shopping holiday is the (partial) invention of e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba – the owner of popular shopping websites Taobao and T-mall.

If you are unfamiliar with Singles Day (you’ve been living a pretty sheltered life for starters), it’s a quasi-holiday originally started by lonely single college students. Since the day’s humble beginnings, Alibaba has transformed it into an online shopping extravaganza with major retailers slashing prices for 24-hours.

The concept behind Double 12, according to Alibaba, is to profile small and medium-sized brands that may have been trampled by larger businesses on Singles Day.

It’s unclear how successful today's sale will be, as it received considerably less build-up than Single’s Day (which brought in a staggering USD14.3 billion in 2015), but – based on the deals we've seen – we are reasonably confident there will be some happy shoppers.

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