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Crowds have been pouring in to visit gravesites over the past two weekends.-- ST PHOTO: DESMOND FOO
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DAWN is about to break at Choa Chu Kang Chinese cemetery on a Wednesday morning. A thick mist, a result of rainfall the night before, hangs low over tombstones as figures move purposefully in the shadows.
It's not a spooky scene from the netherworld, just Qing Ming - the annual Chinese rite where people pay respects to their ancestors with offerings and prayers.
The traditional festival falls on Friday but people start visiting cemeteries and columbaria - depending on whether their loved ones have been buried or cremated - over a month-long period surrounding this date.
Crowds have been pouring in to visit gravesites over the past two weekends, so weekday mornings like this see a steady trickle of families hoping to beat the crush.
'It's too crowded over the weekends so we decided to come before work today,' says Mr Koh Teack Guan, 71, a transportation business owner visiting his father's grave with his five brothers and sisters.
The family have come bearing 'gifts' such as packages of paper clothes - symbolising that the dead are provided for - to be burnt at a nearby grassy spot near where their father was laid to rest.
'It's been an 18-year tradition since he died in 1990,' Mr Koh adds in Mandarin.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!
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