Table 3.

Categories related to group interaction.

Category	Original statement	Conceptual encoding
Accumulation of linguistic capital	Active acquisition of linguistic capital	“Although I cannot speak Cantonese very well, I try my best to communicate with them in Cantonese.”
	Socialized language acquisition	“I’m also gradually learning from my peers and observing the way they live.”
	Utilization of linguistic symbol systems	“I will also use the language of Hong Kong people, that is, traditional Chinese characters and Cantonese colloquial expressions to communicate.”
Conversion of capital within the education system	Challenges in the cross-border conversion of academic capital	“In Guangzhou, dealing with English is not that difficult. When I first arrived here, I simply could not keep up and had a really tough time studying it.”
	Reconstruction of learning values	“One thing I was really not used to when I first came to Hong Kong was that they did not care much about academic grades.”
	Investment in oral expression capabilities	“I ever did presentation, and answered questions in Cantoness, which has made my accent less pronounced.”
Cultivation of social capital	Adaptation to social rhythms	“Later on, I gradually got used to it. It’s just that this society has a relatively fast pace, and there is also a relatively high level of hostility and irritability.”
	Transformation of media usage patterns	“I think it’s the bandwagon effect. When people around me all started using these apps and got exposed to this mainstream social media culture.”
	Internalization of autonomy values	“I still decided to try to fit into this kind of life. Maybe I should get myself more accustomed to doing things alone or completing tasks independently, instead of being overly dependent on others.”
Shared cultural space	Cultural consumption consensus	“Regarding the visit of Lionel Messi to Hong Kong for a football match and the release of the Black Myth Wukong last year, they have achieved a form of group cooperation. Or at least, everyone has reached a consensus and shares the same views and opinions.”
	Survivalism consensus	“In fact, in real life, the Hong Kong people are also tired from constantly rushing around. And not many of them will deliberately bother to argue about whether you are from Hong Kong or the Chinese Mainland.”
	Cultural affinity cognition	“I think the people in Guangdong have a fairly high degree of cultural recognition of Hong Kong.”
Cross-boundary professional interaction	Neutral space for professional interaction	“During the process of my cooperation with him, there were not any internal conflicts that I had in mind. On the contrary, we had harmonious exchanges and discussions with each other.”
	Reciprocal teaching relationship	“He patiently explained my statements and provided me with the kind of replies that I had hoped to obtain in my ideal situation.”
	Empathetic interaction transcending identity	“The classmates at that time were really nice. They did not make fun of me even though I completely did not understand and could not keep up at all.”
Cross-perspective thinking	Perspective-taking ability	“The reason is that none of them stood in the other party’s position to think.”
	Dialectical judgment ability	“Actually, I’m not someone who particularly likes to post things online. For example, if I see a post where there is a war of words between Mainland people and Hong Kong people in the comments, I might take a look. Whichever side, whether it’s the Mainland people or the Hong Kong people, makes sense, I will give them a thumbs-up. If the Mainland people make sense, I’ll give them a thumbs-up, and if the Hong Kong people make sense, I’ll do the same for them. That is, I stand by the truth, not by my kin. I think this is very important. People should have a dialectical way of thinking and not let their stance determine their way of thinking.”
	Efforts toward depoliticized communication	“I think it’s most important to look at a problem calmly and not launch personal attacks just because of someone’s identity.”
Dilemma of mutual trust	Differences in trust systems	“I think trust is a very difficult problem to solve.”
	Incompatibility of communication modes	“He will only resort to verbal abuse or violent behavior. He will not listen to you carefully, nor will he talk to you properly.”
	Hyper-politicization of social issues	“When you talk with the professor and the topic comes to political democracy, it seems that everyone gets really excited, I think. It’s really difficult to communicate because they have their own very strong opinions and expressions, and the way I usually deal with it is just to keep silent.”
Ideological polarization	Solidification of group stereotypes	“For many Hong Kong people, their impression of the Mainland still remains at the level of mindless criticism.”
	Differences in early socialization	“The difficulty, as I see it, is that people’s ideological concepts are instilled from a young age, and there is also the issue of cultural identity.”
	Deeply entrenched political stances	“I think in 2019, during that riot, they would conduct doxxing on some Mainland students who were relatively well-known.”
Framework of resource allocation conflict	Perception of resource competition	“They think that we are competing with them and that we are taking away some of the resources that they originally should have had.”
	Zero-sum view of economic opportunities	“Mainlanders are believed to have affected their employment and also their welfare.”
	Divergence in political and economic systems	“Hong Kong practices capitalism, while the Chinese Mainland adheres to socialism. The Chinese Mainland places more emphasis on some collective activities, whereas Hong Kong is relatively more independent and autonomous in certain aspects.”