A comparative case study from the perspective of Confucianism on students’ and staff’s perceptions of happiness at two public universities respectively in Hong Kong and London – Happiness is not a frequent topic of research in the Chinese philosophy and the number of academic studies about happiness from the angle of Confucianism is even less. It represents a gap in the wealth of literature. Confucianism is therefore proposed as the perspective for the current study, as it is relevant in at least three aspects: happiness, education and its influence across eastern and western cultures.