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. 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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.
– 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.)