The character 相 (xiāng): to examine

A sunlit paved courtyard: a grey brick wall with tiled coping at the back, pierced by a round moon gate showing trees beyond, bamboo at the right, a lattice window at the far left. A small pine sits in a green glazed basin on a carved stone stand, and a flat terracotta orange figure in a long robe, hair in a bun and hands behind the back, leans toward it. At the right stands the character 相 in near black, a narrow 木 beside an upright frame of three cells.

Pronunciation: xiāng
Strokes: 9
Radical: 目
Made of: 木目

What it means

each other; one another; mutually; fret on the neck of a pipa 琵琶[pi2 pa5] (a fret on the soundboard is called a 品[pin3])

Where its shape comes from

Xu Shen breaks this one into two elements the course has already covered: to inspect, to look closely, from 目 and 木, the eye and the tree. His commentator Duan Yucai sharpens the idea in 1815 by quoting the Book of Changes: of everything one can observe on the earth, nothing rewards observation like a tree. The sense of mutually, the one a beginner meets first in words such as 相信 (xiāngxìn) or 互相 (hùxiāng), came later.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE) and Duan Yucai's commentary (1815); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

Two characters already learned, shoulder to shoulder: 木 on the left, 目 on the right. The tree tightens to leave room, exactly as it does in 林: its last stroke, which ought to sweep down to the right, shrinks to a dot against the trunk.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

相信 xiāng xìn · HSK 3 to believe; to be convinced; to accept as true
照相机 zhào xiàng jī · HSK 3 camera; CL:台[tai2],部[bu4],架[jia4]
相同 xiāng tóng · HSK 4 identical; same
互相 hù xiāng · HSK 4 each other; mutually; mutual
相反 xiāng fǎn · HSK 4 opposite; contrary
相关 xiāng guān · HSK 5 related; relevant; pertinent; to be interrelated; (statistics) correlation

Writing it

See the stroke order of 相, animated stroke by stroke.