“Where are you from?”
It sounds simple enough. But as Ross explores in this episode of Embracing All of Me, it’s a question that can carry the weight of everything, culture, family, survival, especially when you’re queer.
Meet Chongzheng Wei AKA Frances, a bisexual clinical psychologist who grew up in a rural village in southern China. His parents were farmers in the mountains. There were no words for queerness where he lived. No one to look up to. Just silence, expectations, and a narrow path laid out for what it meant to be a man and carry on the family name.
“I grew up lonely,” he says, remembering the bullying he faced for how he expressed himself and the pressure to continue the family line.
Chongzheng didn’t find himself through rebellion—he found himself through education. Psychology became his lifeline, then his mirror. First, it was about survival. Later, it became about advocacy on a global scale.
He’s developed comprehensive sexuality education textbooks in China (which were later banned), worked with UNESCO, and researched bisexual mental health across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. His life shows what can happen when personal truth collides with the work of structural change.
One of the most striking things his research reveals is the role of family shame—a specific kind of internalized biphobia that’s tied to collectivism and duty to your parents. For many Chinese bi+ people, being queer doesn’t just feel personal. It feels like betraying your ancestors. Chongzheng talks about this tension with real care, reminding us that “coming out” isn’t some universal finish line—and that survival looks different depending on where you’re from.
These days, whether he’s working with incarcerated LGBTQ+ people in California or building online spaces for Chinese bisexuals around the world, his message stays the same: you don’t have to leave your roots behind to become whole. “Bisexuality is just one part of who we are,” he says. “And all the parts deserve love.”
This episode is a quiet invitation—to sit with complexity, to find your people, and to trust that healing can stretch across mountains, borders, and generations.