乡

鄉
xiāng
noun HSK 5 #9,337

Meanings

  1. 1 countryside; hometown
  2. 2 village; township

Examples

HSK 4
Xiāngxia de kōngqì hěn hǎo.
The air in the countryside is very good.
HSK 5
Tā hěn xiǎngniàn jiāxiāng.
He misses his hometown very much.
HSK 5
Huí dào jiāxiāng, shúxī de yíqiè dōu ràng tā gǎndào shífēn qīnqiè.
Back in his hometown, everything familiar felt so warm to him.

Tips

usage
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.

Stroke Order

乡 xiāng