Outspoken retired PLA major general Luo Yuan has once again fallen into public controversy. While meeting with a group of middle school students Friday, Luo talked about heroic figures who were mocked or even denounced online nowadays, adding that "Liu Hulan and Dong Cunrui are national heroes and we should worship them like worshipping parents."

Both Liu and Dong are household names in China. Liu was a 15-year-old girl executed by the KMT in 1947 for being actively involved in mobilizing villagers to support the CPC. And Dong was a communist soldier who detonated explosives he was holding to destroy a KMT bunker and killed himself in the process.

Pictures in textbooks recording the two revolutionary martyrs' heroic moments are remembered by generations.

However, it is open to question whether they can still be role models today. At a special historic stage, the two young icons represented a spiritual faith and values. Dying for the sake of victory was seen as the loftiest mission. Today, the criteria for heroes have diversified along with the passage of time. For instance, IT entrepreneurs who started from scratch but became business legends are regarded as idols among young people, which is in accordance with today's zeitgeist.

But does the upgrading of role models mean ridiculing, overturning and bringing down the heroes of history? More than six decades on, heroic figures who were once worshipped face suspicions.

In 2007, an article from a Peking University professor claiming that Liu was not beheaded by the KMT but her fellow villagers stirred up great controversy. It was later denied by two witnesses still living in the village.

This sense of dedication and collectiveness may seem to be beyond our imagination. Today we can only pass through the mist of history and feel that sense of pride, their bravery and the flames of war in yellowed photos, black-and-white film shots or heavy memoirs. Heroes' monuments embody not only the spirit of that historic era, but also all the suffering and hardship that once took place on the land and which should be remembered.

The mocking of red heroes partly mirrors a nihilism that is not uncommon among Net users.

There is also jeering of the Lei Feng spirit - dedication, selflessness and modesty, saying that Lei must have died of fatigue. All these are just entertaining fragments, and cannot be taken seriously.

A country without heroes is pathetic, but it is even more pathetic to have heroes but show no reverence toward them.

Casually smashing historic idols and falling into historic nihilism will only lead to tragedy. The Chinese should have already learned a lesson in this regard.