Last night, as I headed out to Kinross for a workout, I realized that Los Angeles had once again entered the season when wearing a T-shirt and shorts feels chilly. Strangely, that ordinary moment in fifty-degree California weather suddenly took me back to a night in December 2023, when I walked out of a hotel bundled in a coat into the cold of Pittsburgh. I took the photograph below that night.
I asked myself: why do I miss Pittsburgh? I spent only two very short days there—more precisely, one day and a few extra hours—and barely explored beyond a two-mile radius around Pitt. Yet every scene still feels as vivid as yesterday. I clearly remember walking out of Pittsburgh International Airport at five in the morning with my two friends, L and H, after enduring a five-hour Spirit Airlines flight. The cold wind against my face made everything feel unreal; it was the first time in fifteen months that I had felt air below freezing. I remember helping L carry his mattress and desk to the dumpster at his apartment, and then watching him point to the last muffin left in the room and declare that it tasted terrible. I remember playing pickup soccer on a Pittsburgh night after a month away from the field, then rushing to buy chicken tenders before the restaurant closed. They may have been the best American-style chicken tenders I have had in the United States. I also remember the Sichuan restaurant operating from a house in a residential neighborhood, serving Sichuan dishes, grilled fish, and skewers. Pitt students sat at the surrounding tables, talking about the same everyday things that international students discuss in Los Angeles.
Are those experiences what I miss? I have had similar experiences in Los Angeles, so perhaps the answer lies in the city’s character. Pittsburgh really does have an unusual layout. The main road connecting the university, apartments, supermarkets, and restaurants—and that Sichuan restaurant inside a house—were unlike anything I had seen in Los Angeles. At the same time, Pittsburgh felt remarkably quiet. On cold mornings, office workers hurried by carrying coffee; at night, only a handful of cars remained on the road. Downtown seemed to have few roaring sports cars and few restaurants or bars staying open late for nightlife. Perhaps it was this contrast with Los Angeles that made the city so appealing.
But no—that cannot be the whole answer, because I have never grown tired of the energy and pace of Los Angeles. Perhaps what I miss is not the place itself, but that particular time. After all the small concerns of life in Los Angeles, I was able to spend a brief, carefree interval with two of my closest friends in a city so far from home. Those were also L’s final two days as a student in Pittsburgh. I cannot fully place myself in his position; perhaps I will understand only when I leave Los Angeles years from now. It must be an extraordinarily complicated feeling. L and H, the two old friends who traveled with me, have both since returned to Shanghai for work. Although the Pittsburgh trip was only a year ago, it already feels impossible to return to that moment.
My friend D in China once asked me, “Don’t you miss the places you visited back home?” I told him that I miss that day in Lhasa and those late nights in Chongqing too. But I know that one day we will return to Lhasa and eat Tibetan noodles together, and one day we will again search the streets of Chongqing at midnight for a noodle shop that is still open. What may never happen again is visiting Pittsburgh with my closest friends in exactly that same state of mind.
Writing this, I have to say it again: damn, I miss that winter so much. I went to Hawaiʻi, Pittsburgh, and New York to see the world beyond California. At the time, I called that month “A December for Myself.” Now I think it should have been called “A December for My Friends and Me,” because without them, none of it would have meant nearly as much. They are now in different parts of China and the United States, working toward lives of their own, though they still occasionally complain about work or school just as I do. I hope we can meet again soon and catch up on the latest drama, jokes, difficulties, and achievements.
Oh, and I also walked around Pitt’s campus. I still remember holding a cup of hot chocolate in the campus store. I bought a small Pitt keychain there, and it now hangs from my backpack:
11/05/2024
UCLA, Los Angeles