deer in the forests of Tainan, or not

In fact, Tainan’s Shanshang Township (山上鄉), is not literally “on a mountain” as its name implies, but is described as being in the 麓 (lü, “foothills”).

This is a fairly uncommon Chinese word, at least in speech. But composed of the words for deer (鹿) beneath the trees of a forest (林), at first sight it looks like a lovely compound pictograph making use of complex imagery.

Perhaps it is, for one thing it is in the dictionary under the 鹿 radical (whereas the similar character 簏 composed of deer under bamboo is found under the 竹 bamboo radical), but characters were not always categorized "correctly".

Furthermore, 鹿 is pronounced lu4, which is similar enough to the lü4 of 麓, so perhaps it is just a regular radical-phonetic compound after all.