(Yicai Global) Nov. 11 -- Tmall, the trading platform of China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA], has broken its own record for sales on China's Singles' Day online shopping festival. By 1.09 p.m. today, Alibaba Group's online marketplace Tmall had seen sales worth CNY120.7 million (USD18.29 billion), breaking the full-day transaction record of last year, showed the latest data released by the company.

China's Singles' Day, which sparks a massive online shopping frenzy, falls on Nov. 11 every year. It started as an obscure "anti-Valentine's" celebration for single people in the 1990s, but it has spawned into the world's biggest online shopping event. 

As of 1.00 p.m., Guangdong ranked first in terms of Singles' Day trading volume among China's provinces and municipalities, followed by eastern provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Shanghai ranked fourth, and Beijing came in fifth.

The top three cities with the highest trading turnover were Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou.