乡 is used in: 家乡 (hometown), 乡下 (countryside), 故乡 (native place — literary), 乡村 (village/rural area). 老乡 means 'fellow townsman' — a warm way to greet someone from your region.
Components
pictograph
乡xiāng
countryside; native place
Modern simplified silhouette of traditional 鄉, which originally pictured two people facing each other across a shared dish — a village feast, seed of 'community, home village.' The 1956 reform collapsed everything into three sweeping strokes; no longer analysable. Indexed under Kangxi #52 幺 (yāo, tiny) via the small curling shape at the top.
Filed under radical 幺 (yāo, #52) by convention. 幺 is not a separate component in 乡, so no strokes are highlighted.
