Would this information lead to a solution?
From man rsync
:
. . .
If you
want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the symlink via its path, and referent directory via its real path.
. . .
It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that
is sent as implied directories for each path you specify. With
a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you
can insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:
rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note
that the dot must be followed by a slash, so “/foo/.” would not
be abbreviated.)
. . .
[omitted some information regarding earlier versions of rsync
]