The publication of Albert Einstein’s private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon’s racist attitudes to the people he met on his travels, particularly the Chinese. 
 
 Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes. He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.” 
 
 Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology, said: “I think a lot of comments strike us as pretty unpleasant – what he says about the Chinese in particular. 
 
 “They’re kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon. I think it’s quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements. They’re more off guard, he didn’t intend them for publication.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A page from Einstein’s travel journals, written while in China in 1922. Photograph: With permission of the Albert Einstein Archives, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Morgan Library & Museum 
 
 Rosenkranz has edited and translated The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein, which have just been published for the first time as a standalone volume by Princeton University Press, including facsimiles of the diary pages. The diaries have only previously been published in German as part of the 15-volume Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, with small supplementary translations into English. A spokesperson for Princeton University Press said: “This is the first time Einstein’s travel diary will be made available to anyone who isn’t a serious Einstein scholar.” 
 
 Further passages in the diaries, which are thought to have been written for Einstein’s stepdaughters in Berlin while he and his wife were travelling in Asia, Spain and Palestine, and as an aide memoire, see him writing of the Chinese that “even those reduced to working like horses never give the impression of conscious suffering. A peculiar herd-like nation [ … ] often more like automatons than people.” He later adds, in Rosenkranz’s words, “a healthy dose of extreme misogyny” to his xenophobia with the observation: “I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthrals the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”. 
 
 In Colombo in Ceylon, Einstein writes of how the locals “live in great filth and considerable stench at ground level” adding that they “do little, and need little. The simple economic cycle of life.” 
 
 Einstein’s perceptions of the Japanese he meets are, in contrast, more positive: “Japanese unostentatious, decent, altogether very appealing,” he writes. “Pure souls as nowhere else among people. One has to love and admire this country.” But Rosenkranz points out that he also concludes that the “intellectual needs of this nation seem to be weaker than their artistic ones – natural disposition?” 
 
 “Einstein’s diary entries on the biological origin of the alleged intellectual inferiority of the Japanese, Chinese, and Indians are definitely not understated and can be viewed as racist – in these instances, other peoples are portrayed as being biologically inferior, a clear hallmark of racism. The disquieting comment that the Chinese may ‘supplant all other races’ is also most revealing in this regard,” writes Rosenkranz. 
 
 “Here, Einstein perceives a foreign ‘race’ as a threat, which … is one of the characteristics of a racist ideology. Yet the remark that must strike the modern reader as most offensive is his feigning not to understand how Chinese men can find their women sufficiently attractive to have offspring with them. In light of these instances, we must conclude that Einstein did make quite a few racist and dehumanising comments in the diary, some of which were extremely unpleasant.” 
 
 Rosenkranz told the Guardian that although views like Einstein’s were prevalent at the time, they were not universal. “That’s usually the reaction I get – ‘we have to understand, he was of the zeitgeist, part of the time’ – but I think I tried here and there to give a broader context. There were other views out there, more tolerant views,” he said. 
 
 In his introduction, Rosenkranz writes how it is important to explore how a humanist icon such as Einstein – whose image was once used for a UNHCR campaign with the slogan “A bundle of belongings isn’t the only thing a refugee brings to his new country. Einstein was a refugee” – could have written xenophobic comments about the peoples he encountered. 
 
 “The answer to this question seems very relevant in today’s world, in which the hatred of the other is so rampant in so many places around the world,” he writes. “It seems that even Einstein sometimes had a very hard time recognising himself in the face of the other.” ||||| Albert Einstein is not just revered as the scientist behind the theory of relativity but also as a humanitarian icon. However, excerpts of the physicist’s private diaries, which detail his travels around Spain, Palestine, Japan, China, and Singapore in the early 1920s, will significantly diminish his stature as the latter. 
 
 The Nobel Prize winner and civil rights advocate is remembered for his stance against discrimination, both in his native Germany and in the United States. In a speech at Lincoln University in 1946—the first US institution to grant degrees to African-Americans—he famously stated that racism was a “disease of white people.” 
 
 And yet, The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein reveal that his impressions of people he met were, in fact, racist. The journals—which were reportedly not intended for public consumption—have been translated from German and published by Princeton University Press, which the publisher says is “the first time Einstein’s travel diary will be made available to anyone who isn’t a serious Einstein scholar.” 
 
 Quotes from the volume make for unsettling reading. He describes “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he met on his travels, and is particularly racist towards the Chinese, writing that “it would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.” 
 
 The senior editor of the published diaries, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, told the Guardian that Einstein’s observations, in no uncertain terms, underpin many of the racist ideas about the inferiority of races that persist today. 
 
 “Einstein’s diary entries on the biological origin of the alleged intellectual inferiority of the Japanese, Chinese, and Indians are definitely not understated and can be viewed as racist—in these instances, other people are portrayed as being biologically inferior, a clear hallmark of racism. The disquieting comment that the Chinese may ‘supplant all other races’ is also most revealing in this regard.” ||||| Albert Einstein’s racist attitudes towards Chinese people have been revealed following the publication of travel diaries he kept during a visit to Asia in the 1920s. 
 
 The previously unseen journals have been published by Princeton University Press, documenting the scientist’s five-and-a-half month travels between 1922 and 1923 to China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, as well as Palestine and Spain. 
 
 The publisher describes the diaries as detailing Einstein’s “quirky, succinct, and at times irreverent” musings on science, philosophy, art and politics, adding the handwritten journals also reveal his “stereotyping of members of various nations and raise questions about his attitudes on race.” 
 
 In one excerpt, seen by The Guardian, Einstein describes the Chinese as “industrious, filthy, obtuse people,” later calling them a “peculiar herd-like nation… often more like automatons than people.” 
 
 "It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary,” he adds. 
 
 In another entry, Einstein described how “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” 
 
 The book, The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922–1923, was edited by Ze’ev Rosenkranz, senior editor and assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology. 
 
 Keystone/Getty Images) 
 
 Speaking to The Guardian, Rosenkranz admits that some of the passenges written by Einstein are “pretty unpleasant—what he says about the Chinese in particular.” 
 
 “They’re kind of in contrast to the public image of the great humanitarian icon," he adds. "I think it’s quite a shock to read those and contrast them with his more public statements.They’re more off guard, he didn’t intend them for publication.” 
 
 Einstein became an American citizen in 1940 after deciding he could not to return to his native Germany following the rise of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist famously described racism as a “disease of white people” during a speech at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University in 1946. 
 
 In a Q and A with the Einstein Papers project to promote the book, Rosenkranz said that writing about a famous historical figure's personal life can provide “fascinating insights” about their personalities. 
 
 “The intention is not salacious but rather a genuine attempt to understand what makes such celebrities tick,” he adds. “This is particularly pertinent in Einstein's case, where there is such a great discrepancy between the public image and the actual historical individual. ”
– In a 1946 speech, Albert Einstein described racism as a "disease of white people." He apparently had it, as revealed in the genius's travel diaries, published entirely in English for the first time, per Quartz. Describing travels through China, Singapore, Japan, Palestine, and Spain between 1922 and 1923, per Newsweek, Einstein's writing shows an apparent obsession with the word "obtuse" and an overall unfavorable attitude toward Chinese people. He describes them as "industrious, filthy, obtuse people" with an "abundance" of "obtuse" offspring, reports the Guardian. Commenting on "little difference" between Chinese men and women, he goes on to wonder "what kind of fatal attraction" females possess that "enthrals the corresponding men." "It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races," Einstein continues. "For the likes of us, the mere thought is unspeakably dreary." His opinions "are definitely not understated and can be viewed as racist," editor and translator Ze'ev Rosenkranz tells the Guardian. "In these instances, other peoples are portrayed as being biologically inferior, a clear hallmark of racism." This is especially apparent as Einstein describes Japanese people as "altogether very appealing" and "pure souls as nowhere else among people." As more tolerant views were held during his lifetime, "it seems that even Einstein sometimes had a very hard time recognizing himself in the face of the other," writes Rosenkranz in the introduction to The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein. He adds that a discussion of Einstein's views, contrasting with his public image as a humanitarian icon, "seems very relevant in today's world, in which the hatred of the other is so rampant." (A scrap of paper Einstein scribbled on recently sold at auction for a record price.)