Chinese Singles Day
Limited-time Sale! Buy a luxury dining set and get a melancholy dream for free! | Fiction | Fresh Soup
My name is Etgar Keret and I’m a saleophobic. The truth is, I’m not just afraid of sales but of having to buy things at all. There’s something about interacting with a person who isn’t a friend and is supposed to give me an item I need in return for my money, that somehow makes me feel lonely. Every slice of pizza I buy reminds me that there’s no family dinner waiting for me at home, every alienating cab ride to the airport clarifies that I don’t have a friend with a car who wants to go on an adventure with me, and every chair massage at the mall sends my brain the sad message that since my wife is busy working on a new film, it’ll be next to impossible to find someone willing to touch me for free.
But if shopping in general stresses me out, sales plunge me into a depression. I can’t be the only one who feels this way, otherwise surely they’d come up with more uplifting names for sales. “Black Friday” sounds like a terrorist organization, or at least a day best skipped. And the Chinese mega-sales event known as Singles Day does not give off a particularly happy vibe. I’d like to believe that all singles—not only the Chinese among them—are single by choice. But even if that’s true, their special day seems lonely and sad enough to write a short-short story about.
This story has just relocated to Autocorrect, my forthcoming book.
Lovely story, I could just feel the Hebrew language oozing out of every inch of the translation.
Is there no way for an avid fan to somehow see these in their original form?
I'd understand if not but it's worth a try/comment:)
Ha! This is great. I lived in China for a couple of years (before the pandemic) and loved the ease with which I could get anything delivered to my door.