how Confucian are YOU?

From time to time, I am astounded by rumours about certain highly distinguished and widely known professors of Confucianism/Chinese philosophy jumped the queue at a bus stop in campus considering himself the first in a non-existent queue solely for professors or literally sneered at (via email) a perspective postgraduate student who was unable to study with him due to family responsibility.

They, of course, might be misunderstood or mistaken, or even in their highest esteem were teaching students invaluable lessons of life. Yet, this is life. They are still considered professors of Confucianism/Chinese philosophy.

After all, is it not possible to measure/categories/label Confucian actors, or strong/weak Confucians? A distinguished scholar and his team tell us why it is possible.

I strongly recommend interested (or disinterested; you will be inspired) researchers of humanities and social sciences (sciences and engineering too; interdisciplinary is a discipline) of Chinese (or non-Chinese; you will also be enlightened) decent living in Chinese (or non-Chinese; we are living in a multi-cultural world, ain't we?) societies should read the following scholarly article on contemporary Chinese and ask yourself a big question: how Confucian I am, by using the yardstick of the researchers suggest. Have a go. Confucius will be pleased.

Tak Sing Cheung, Hoi Man Chan, Kin Man Chan, Ambrose Y.C. King, Chi Yue Chiu, Chung Fang Yang, "How Confucian are contemporary Chinese? Construction of an ideal type and its application to three Chinese communities," European Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, Oct. 2006, pp. 157-80.

Given that normative and behavioural orientations derived from Confucianism may still guide Chinese behaviour as a consequence of processes of social reproduction across generations, they seeks to question to what extent and in what respects is Confucianism still relevant for understanding Chinese society, and endeavour to contemplate a methodical tool for the measurement of Confucianism; in other words, they attempt to construct the ideal type of Confucian actors and distinguish between formal and substantive values in Confucianism. The big question of the paper is to ask "How Confucian are contemporary Chinese?"

In searching relevant entry of this paper, I found, from the leading author's (Tak Sing Cheung) website, surprisingly (without any mention in the English paper) that he also wrote a similar Chinese paper on this topic in 2001 titled 當代華人有幾儒？儒人理念型的構造及大陸、港台三個地區的調查分析，in 《社會理論論叢》，第1輯，頁151-172。