Today is Double Ten Day, a national holiday in Taiwan to commemorate the Chinese Revolution of October 10, 1911.

In recent years, the Republic of China, which is merely a symbol in memory of mainlanders, has loomed in some people's minds. It plays a complex role in the Taiwan question.

Nowadays, a morbid nostalgia for the Republic of China has emerged among a few Internet communities and a small number of intellectuals.

"Republic of China fervor" is fixated on beautifying that historical period, claiming it was a time of "democracy, freedom and respect for wisdom."

However, supporters merely base their views on the states of a minority of senior intellectuals during that time, who belonged to the upper class and were respected due to their academic performances. There is even extreme online rhetoric that Double Ten Day rather than the National Day of the People's Republic of China should be celebrated.

Nostalgia is a basic emotion of human beings. Great masters Wang Guowei and Gu Hongming preserved their pigtails even after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) is still being remembered with nostalgia by some. There are complicated reasons for nostalgia and a mature society should give it a wide tolerance.

However, we should make no bones about exposing their tricks when fanatics make use of nostalgia for the Republic of China as an ideological, and even a political tool, to challenge mainstream historical and political views in the Chinese mainland.   

Chinese people abandoned the Republic of China 65 years ago.

If the Kuomintang (KMT) regime hadn't been rotten at the core and alienated the sympathies of the people, the Communist Party of China wouldn't have been able to mobilize the whole country to defeat it.

KMT rule in the mainland was a mess. Its national governance failed to reach the grass roots and smash the separatist warlord regimes. Moreover, KMT was subject to Western powers. British warships were still sailing in the rivers of the Chinese mainland in the 1940s. China as a gigantic country was unable to resist the aggression of a small island nation like Japan. The KMT regime is held responsible for the humiliation that China suffered from the Japanese invasion.

The Republic of China cannot be compared to present-day China, be it national comprehensive strength, international status, level of livelihood, and social security.

We could miss the songs, sceneries or figures of that period, but praising the then state system and its influence is a humiliation to the whole Chinese history.