to allow / to permit / to promise / to praise / somewhat / perhaps
许
=
午
+
讠
:
Xu Xian just loves having lunch in the space station. In fact he loves it so much that he calls mission control to get permission to praise it on an advertising column. After he got the permission, he smears his lunch all over the advertising column.
earth / ground / field / place / land / CL:片[pian4]
地
=
也
+
土
:
Dorothy Gale (di) hates the cleanliness of the space station, so she used an excavator (也) in the space station's bathroom (Ø4) to dig a pile of dirt (土) out of the ground (地) for a mud bath.
mountain / hill / anything that resembles a mountain / CL:座[zuo4] / bundled straw in which silkworms spin cocoons / gable
山
=
丨
+
凵
:
Mnemonic symbol: 山 looks like the tip of a fork. Sherlock Holmes (sh) is climbing a mountain (山) in front of the anthill (an1). He uses a dinosaur bone (〡) as walking stick, and to have better grip he attached a fork (山) to its tip. Unfortunately he accidentally sticks the fork into a receptacle (凵) on the ground of the mountain and gets shocked.