美景
měijǐng · HSK 7
scenery
🏞️ 美景 = 美 beautiful + 景 scenery = a beautiful sight
美 means beautiful (same 美 as in 美国, 美丽); 景 means scene or view (as in 景色, 风景). Stack them and you get a beauty spot — scenery worth the trip.
美 — sheep 羊 on top + big 大 below
美 is traditionally explained as a pictograph of a person (大) wearing a large sheep or ram's-head ornament, suggesting beauty through adornment. An alternative reading takes 羊 (sheep) over 大 (big) to mean 'a big, fat sheep'—seen as delicious and pleasing, hence 'beautiful, good'.
景 — sun 日 on top + capital 京 below (phonetic)
景 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 日 (sun) gives the meaning and 京 (jīng, capital) supplies the sound. It originally meant 'sunlight' or 'bright', then extended to 'shadow cast by sunlight', and later broadened to 'scenery' or 'view'.