This uniquely Chinese phenomenon, known as Double Eleven, happens annually on the innocuously-named Single’s Day. Despite its humble origins as an impromptu holiday created to celebrate bachelordom, Single’s Day has now blossomed into a (according to a recent estimate) 268.4-billion-yuan cash cow.

1182 metal cups out of 3000 are missing. This is the shocking report from Malcolm Shu, the Co-Founder of Sproutworks, who said, “I hope everyone can do their job. If only 10% do and 90% don’t, that doesn’t work.”

It is not an uncommon sight, especially around this time of year: depleted pens strewn undiscarded, loose papers askew on tables, comatose laptops left half-open, abandoned bookbags defending scarce seat spaces, the crack of dawn breaking on a jam-packed library, and (of course) the ubiquitous legion of napping student

For this report, we had a conversation with Mengjie Shen, the Director of Events Committee and sophomore at NYU Shanghai, about the whole process of preparing and organizing this year’s “Carnival of Terrors.”