HANGZHOU, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese shoppers have spent big over the Singles' Day shopping festival, showing the country's strong economic recovery following the COVID-19 epidemic.

Sales on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall exceeded 372.3 billion yuan (56.29 billion U.S. dollars) between Nov. 1 and 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 11.

At the shopping peak, 583,000 orders were made in a single second on Tmall, setting a new online shopping record.

To cater to growing demand from Chinese consumers, Tmall launched this year's shopping festival early, with the first discount period running from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3 in addition to the normal full-day sales on Nov. 11.

More than 800 million shoppers, 250,000 brands and 5 million merchants have participated in this year's shopping spree, according to Tmall.

The event was first launched by Alibaba in 2009.   ■