The word 向上 is a directional compound formed by combining the character 向 (xiàng), meaning "toward" or "to face", with 上 (shàng), meaning "up" or "above". It follows the standard Chinese syntactic pattern where a preposition or verb of direction (向) is paired with a positional noun (上) to create a phrase that functions as a verb ("to go upward", "to advance") or, more commonly, an adverb ("upward", "upwards"). This construction is productive in Mandarin, creating terms like 向下 (downward), 向前 (forward), and 向后 (backward), where the first element specifies the vector of movement or orientation and the second element defines the spatial goal.