Ah Q-ism Syndrome or Passionate Love for Truth?

CHINESE ARE DEFENDING EINSTEIN'S VIEWS ON THEIR ANCESTORS: "The Chinese are a peculiar herd-like nation... often more like automatons than people".
BY JASON LEMON

With the widely reported news this week of Albert Einstein’s harsh comments against the Chinese, some in the East Asian nation have actually come out in defense of the legendary physicist.

Published by Princeton University Press, The Travel Diaries of Albert Einstein: The Far East, Palestine, and Spain, 1922-1923 is the first English printing of the intellectual’s writings from his trip to Asia.
German-born American physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) referred to the Chinese as “industrious, filthy people.” He also said that the Chinese are a “peculiar herd-like nation… often more like automatons than people.” 

Among other critical comments, Einstein referred to the Chinese as “industrious, filthy people.” 

He also said that the Chinese are a “peculiar herd-like nation … often more like automatons than people.” 

He argued that "it would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all races,” saying that such a thought “is unspeakably dreary.”
Einstein took issue with the fact that the Chinese he encountered on his trip “don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods.” 

He also lamented that “even the children are spiritless and look obtuse,” and explained that he can’t understand how Chinese men find Chinese women attractive.
While some around the world expressed criticism of the iconic scientist's severe words, Chinese have actually jumped to defend Einstein. 

According to The Guardian, several users of China’s popular social media site Weibo voiced their support for the scientist and even gave credence to his views.
German-born Swiss-US physicist Albert Einstein, author of the theory of relativity, declares his opposition to the 'H' bomb and to the arms race between the USA and the USSR in a conference 14 February 1950 in Princeton during a TV broadcast which created a considerable stir in the United States and all over the Western World.

One user wrote that when they see photos of that time period, they also perceive their ancestors as “dirty," the South China Morning Post reported. 

The user said: “This is called insulting China? That’s ridiculous... Einstein depicted the true state of China.”
Some even compared Einstein’s writings to those of Lu Xun, who is considered "the father of modern Chinese literature." 

Xun is best known for his critical satire of Chinese society in the early 1900s. 

As one user wrote, Chinese “praise” Xun for pointing out China’s historic disadvantages. 

“Why should we blame Einstein for this?”
Xun was "a savage critic of traditional Chinese culture and revered European writers who were also social critics," Professor Mary Gallagher, the director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek. 

A sculpture of Chinese writer Lu Xun and a painting featuring Soviet leader Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong, are displayed at an exhibition on Soviet painting titled 'The City of the Sun - Triumph of the Socialist Realism,' at the Three Gorges Museum October 22, 2006 in Chongqing Municipality, China.

The Chinese "are pointing out the perceived 'defects' of their culture that both Lu Xun and Einstein noticed," she explained. 

According to Gallagher, history education in the country also portrays the period when Einstein visited "as China’s most humiliating period in the modern era." 

Ah Q-ism syndrome

Chinese defend Einstein's accurate portrait of their people as 'filthy' and 'obtuse'
Scientist’s travel diaries from 1920s described Chinese children as ‘spiritless’ and ‘obtuse’, and people who ‘relieve themselves in leafy woods’
By Lily Kuo

Einstein described Chinese children as ‘spiritless’ and ‘obtuse’ but Chinese say he depicted an accurate picture.

Chinese internet users have defended Albert Einstein’s recently published travel diaries in which the physicist calls the Chinese “industrious, filthy people.”
Portions of the diaries from his travels in Asia in the 1920s were posted online this week and their content surprised Einstein fans.
“Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods,” he wrote.
“All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.”

Einstein's travel diaries reveal shocking truth about Chinese

The theoretical physicist added: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
“Einstein went to China at the wrong time,” said one Weibo user, describing the early years of the Chinese republic, established in 1912, which came after centuries of imperial rule.
“Hunger, war, and poverty all pressed on the Chinese. How could Chinese people at the time gain Einstein’s respect?”
Many were in strong support of the scientist: “This is called insulting China? That’s ridiculous. Did the Chinese in that era look dirty? When I see the photos from then, they look dirty, Einstein depicted the true state of that era.”
Others compared the scientists’s observations to that of Lu Xun, considered the father of modern Chinese literature, who was best known for his scathing satire of Chinese society in the early 20th century.
“We praise Lu Xun because he pointed out our disadvantages. Why should we blame Einstein for this?”
Historical narratives promoted by the Chinese government often paint the days before China’s communist party took power in 1949 as chaotic.
But there were some dissenting voices amongst the comments: “This is just racism. We can see that Einstein is strong in physics but he doesn’t understand humans at all.”

Filthy Men of Asia

Einstein's travel diaries reveal shocking truth about Chinese

RT

A wax model of mathematician Albert Einstein at the Madame Tussaud's in Shanghai. 

Albert Einstein's recently published travel diaries unveil his harsh views on the Chinese.
Published by Princeton University Press, the diaries date back to 1920s, the time when the famous Austrian physicist was extensively traveling with his wife Elsa.

In late 1922 they embarked on a five-and-a-half-month journey to the Far East and the Middle East. They traveled to Singapore, China, Japan, and briefly sojourned in Palestine before concluding the whirlwind tour in Spain.
In manuscripts, he apparently never intended to publish, Einstein shared his travel impressions about art, politics, science, philosophy and ultimately, racial equality. 

The Nobel Prize laureate wrote down thoughts on racial diversity, insisting that some races not only could not equate to others, but were inferior to them.
He described the Chinese as “industrious, filthy, obtuse” and “a peculiar herd-like nation,” that, according to Einstein, posed threat to other nations. 

“It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races,” he wrote. 

“For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
Born in Germany and of Jewish descent, Einstein condemned both the rise of the German National Socialist Party, and later all forms of racism.

In 1946, during his speech at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, focused on fighting racism, he claimed that being a Jew himself he could “understand and empathize with how black people feel as victims of discrimination”.
Ze’ev Rosenkranz, the senior editor of the published diaries, told the Guardian that Einstein’s diary entries on the intellectual inferiority of the Chinese, stemming from their biological background “are definitely not understated and can be viewed as racist.”

Einstein's political incorrectness: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”

In his private journals, Einstein describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes while traveling in China

By Alison Flood

Albert Einstein in 1921.

The publication of Albert Einstein’s private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon’s harsh opinion about the Chinese he met on his travels.
Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. 

In China, Einstein famously 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 a little unpleasant – what he says about the Chinese in particular.
“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.”

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 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 enthralls the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring”.
Einstein’s perceptions of the Japanese he meets are, in contrast, very 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 “Einstein’s diary entries on the biological origin of the intellectual inferiority of Chinese 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 comment that the Chinese may ‘supplant all other races’ is also most revealing in this regard.”

“Here, Einstein perceives the Chinese ‘race’ as a threat. 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 comments in the diary.”