In 2000, sculptor Chong Fah Cheong installed the artwork "First Generation" in Singapore. It depicts five bronze boys leaping into the water.

Back then, the riverbank was dirty, poor, and noisy—a home to early immigrant families. Children would escape the heat by diving straight off the pier. The sculpture brings back the spirit of that carefree childhood, forever lost after the river’s massive cleanup and Singapore’s transformation into a metropolis of skyscrapers.

Bright Bits