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The character 想 (xiǎng): to think

A late afternoon landscape: a grassy summit in the foreground, terraced rice fields dropping away to a village of grey houses with dark roofs, blue grey mountains beyond and a golden sky. At the left an orange figure stands still in profile, arms at the sides, looking toward the distant village. At the right the character 想 in near black: 相 above, a narrow 木 beside an upright frame of three cells, and below it a 心 spread as wide as the whole upper tier without touching it.
Pronunciation
xiǎng
Strokes
13
Level
HSK 1
Radical
心
Made of
相心

What it means

to think (about); to think of; to devise; to think (that); to believe (that); to desire; to want (to); to miss (feel wistful about the absence of)

Where its shape comes from

Xu Shen notes it as 心, with 相 for the sound: the heart carries the meaning, 相 supplies the reading, the two words being xiāng and xiǎng, one tone apart. This is the device behind the great majority of Chinese characters, the one at work in 花: one element for the meaning, one element for the sound. The tree and the eye inside 相 therefore say nothing about thinking; they are there for the way they sound.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

The 相 you have just written, sitting on the 心 of entry twenty-two, which spreads as wide as the whole storey above it. Three characters you already know inside a single one: 木, 目, 心. Know all three and the strokes count themselves.

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

Words it appears in

Writing it

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

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