HANGZHOU, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese shoppers 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 498.2 billion yuan (74.1 billion U.S. dollars) between Nov. 1 and 24:00 on Nov. 11.

Delivery orders generated during the shopping festival exceeded 2.32 billion as of midnight on Nov. 11, which was close to the total number of packages generated in China in 2010.

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 participated in this year's shopping spree, according to Tmall.