I chose to score the final sequence of Journey to the West (宇宙探索编辑部) because it captures the film’s essence—its blend of absurdity, loneliness, and quiet transcendence. I was drawn to how the film turns cosmic exploration into an inner, emotional journey. To express this duality, I wrote the piece as a piano concerto with string quintet and woodwinds—the piano embodying Tang’s fragile humanity, while the strings indicating vivid emotions, and the woodwinds suggest the mysterious, otherworldly realm he seeks. Set in 3/4, the music drifts like a slow waltz through uncertainty, mirroring the film’s dreamlike rhythm and its final acceptance of mystery rather than resolution.

I started with a waltz theme in F major as Tang and Sun enters the cave. The chords alternates between F major7 and D-flat major7 and sync with the stops of the flashlight when Tang was looking for Sun. Then the piano slows down when the view cuts to a fireplace, stretching the rhythm of the plot. When Sun asked that if Tang had another potato, and Tang brought out a huge mushroom. At this moment, the melody modulated to D major. When Sun reveals the mushroom is poisonous, only for Tang to admit he has already eaten a piece, the piano melody unfolds in a descending whole-tone scale, amplifying the tension. As Tang vomits, the original waltz theme returns in octaves, infusing the moment with ironic humor.

The woodwind section enters when Sun confesses he took the mysterious rock, while the bass rises in a chromatic scale—underscoring a steadily swelling, ascending emotional arc. Woodwind and piano correspond, weave around each other. When Tang begins talking about his daughter’s death, a new theme emerges: this marks the first time he confronts the painful truth of having sacrificed his family for his work. The English horn takes over the melody, I chose the English horn to replace the flute because it has a darker sound. The piano also plays the melody in unison with the English horn. For this section, I retain the original chord progression but reharmonize it by substituting each chord with its parallel major or minor.In contrast to the earlier, more open textures, the voicing here is tight and close, channeling profound melancholy.  As this scene climaxes, the theme returns as fragments played by the piano.

When Tang wakes up the next day, the cello melody begins in sync with his eyes opening. The chords sustain and stops abruptly to convey his confusion and apprehension. During this section, there’s no longer piano playing, left only the woodwinds and the string quintet. Once he locates Sun, the piano returns, and starts in a new time signature of 12/8. As the scene intensifies and the birds fly towards Sun and begin to envelop him, the time signature smoothly transitions to 9/8, a less commonly used time signature to evoke the supernatural nature of what is occurring, while maintaining the compound subdivisions. The piano enters into a spree of cascading arpeggios as thousands of birds fly vigorously around Sun. As the birds engulf Sun, they form a spherical shape, and gradually disappear into nothingness. The piano arpeggiation dissipates in sync, until we are left with single alternating notes between C and B-flat, while a close-up of Tang looks on in a combination of confusion, joy and awe.