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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.
Over at another grave, another large group of brothers and sisters, the Pay family, have stacked their father's altar with fruit, flowers and soft drinks.
'Everything that he liked to eat,' quips Mr Pay Bok Seng, 48, who together with his siblings, owns a koi farm nearby.
They light up the still overcast sky with a small bonfire near his grave, tossing joss paper in the flames as they cry 'Huat ah!' (Hokkien for 'prosper') in hope that the dead man will bless their business dealings.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!
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