China’s sprawling Double 11 online shopping event pushed discounting to an extraordinary extreme when a shopper in the eastern part of the country acquired a two-bedroom flat in the northeast for only 11 yuan (about US$1.7).
Taobao, the Chinese e-commerce platform that introduced Double 11 in 2009 as an apparent counterpart to Black Friday, hosted the month-long shopping period through mid-November. The event generated more than 1.6 trillion yuan (about US$240 billion) in online gross merchandise value last year.
The flat was a two-bedroom unit spanning 68 square metres on the seventh floor in Heilongjiang province. It was sold through Alibaba Auction. Taobao is operated by Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post.