The Chinese word 上交 (shàngjiāo) is a verb-object compound formed by combining the character 上, which in this context carries the meaning "upward" or "to a higher level," with the character 交, meaning "to hand over" or "to deliver." Together, they create a single lexical unit meaning "to hand something over to a higher authority or superior body," such as turning in assignments to a teacher, submitting documents to the government, or surrendering contraband to the police. This formation follows a common syntactic pattern in Mandarin where a directional or locative verb (上) modifies a primary action verb (交) to specify the nature or direction of the action.