The date is November 11th, and here in China, that means that it's time to shop online. The Double Eleven Shopping Festival is the country's biggest annual e-commerce event and this year's numbers have already shattered previous records. But some of the industry's major players are keen to make sure this year's Double Eleven Festival is not constrained to just the digital sphere alone. CGTN's Wang Qiwei explains.

With the final countdown, a sleepless night begins. The whole country is in front of the computer, trying to snatch up a bargain. In just two minutes, sales on Alibaba's online platform TMall hit 10 billion yuan. That's about 1.4 billion US dollars. To lift the shopping experience to a new level this year, Alibaba came up with a new strategy.

JING JIE, PRESIDENT TMALL "It's a seamless online and offline shopping experience for this year's Double Eleven Festival. We can experience this in more than 400 cities in China, especially in the 12 cities among them that we call 'ideal cities for new retail'."

The growing e-commerce industry seems to have devastated traditional retail stores in China.

But many business groups want to lure smartphone-addicted shoppers to physical stores that have been turned into 'smart stores' with new technology.

Gimmicks such as code-scanning and augmented reality are used in stores to achieve the full integration of digital and physical commerce.

The Double Eleven Festival started ten years ago as a day for the country's singles to buy things for themselves online.

And as China's consumption power continues to grow, online retail sales have also witnessed a boom, with more than three-quarters of a trillion US dollars in the first eight months this year.

So it comes as no surprise that today's Double Eleven Festival is on larger scale than ever. More than 19,000 overseas brands from 75 countries and regions are participating in the event.

Faced with too many temptations but an empty wallet, maybe it's really the time to "chop off the hands" as Chinese often joke.

WQW, CGTN.