让我们来追溯双十一的诞生史.

　　中国的很多传统节日都可以追溯到上千年以前，但光混节却是个最近几年才兴起的节日。没人能确切说出是谁先想出了这个节日，但能够肯定的是它最早出现在上世纪九十年代中期，是大学生们的一项传统。

　　For a country where many major holidays can be traced back thousands of years, Singles Day is a rreshingly recent invention. No one is quite sure exactly who first thought it up, but it dinitely emerged as a student tradition in the mid-1990s. The most widely-accepted story is that it emerged from the dorms of Nanjing University in 1993 when four single male students got together to discuss how to break free of the loneliness and monotony of single life. One suggested that because of the ones in the date, November 11 would be a good day on which to organize activities for singles.

　　大家公认的说法是，1993年在南京大学的宿舍里，有4个单身男生聚在一起讨论如何摆脱单身生活的孤独和乏味时，其中一个建议说11月11日恰好是四个数字1组成的，就像4个光棍，所以这天可能会是个为光棍们组织活动的好日子。

　　What started as an idea executed by a small group of friends gradually became a university tradition. Singles Day grew into something like the anti-Valentines day, a day China’s single young people – at first just men, but later single women adopted the tradition as well – could use as an excuse to get together and do fun stuff like visit karaoke bars together.

　　就这样，只是由几个朋友想出来的主意慢慢变成了大学里的一项传统。光棍节，逐渐发展成一个与情人节相对的节日，一开始是单身男性的节日，后来单身女性也加入其中，把它当做一个和朋友聚餐玩乐的节日。

　　The fact that the holiday went from local to national in less than two decades likely has a lot to do with China’s demographics and its culture. The country has a serious gender gap – by 2020 it will have 35 million more men than it does women. And because there’s immense family pressure on many young Chinese men and women to find a suitable partner and marry young, young people of both genders embraced the holiday as a kind of release.

　　光棍节能在短短二十多年的时间里从一个小众节日成为一个全国范围内的节日和中国的人口特点及文化是分不开的。中国的男女比例差异较大，到2020年男性人口将比女性人口多出3500万。而很多年轻人又承受着来自家庭的“催婚”压力，所以单身男性和女性都把光棍节看做是一个解脱的节日。