King's Birthday Honours 2026 rececipient - Anne Pang
13 October 2026
Dr Anne Pang has spent over 50 years breaking barriers as a Wing Chun black belt and a fierce pioneer for women’s martial arts. Her decades of teaching free self-defence to female migrants and newly arrived community members culminated in August 2026, when she was presented with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) by the Governor of Victoria at Government House.
Melbourne kung fu queen among King’s Birthday Honours heroes
Published in The Age (7 June 2026) [Link]
Authored by Carolyn Webb.
Photograph by Simon Schluter.
The honours recognise community heroes whether they’re raising money for an ambulance service, teaching women self-defence, bringing killers to justice or organising relief efforts in a bushfire-hit region.
If you were a thug attacking Dr Anne Pang in a dark alley, it would not be your lucky day, because although she’s genial and petite, Pang holds a black belt in the wing chun form of kung fu. Pang says she wants “to debunk and demystify the notion that women are weak and vulnerable”.
Having practised martial arts for more than 50 years, and run the Anne Pang Self Defence school since 1990, she can still do fast punches and high kicks. And even, deftly, the splits. For service to the Chinese community of Melbourne, and to women, Pang is the recipient of a Medal of the Order of Australia in the King’s Birthday Honours.
Pang, who migrated to Australia from Taiwan aged 11 in 1970, started learning kung fu in 1974. Now as well as teaching paying customers, she often runs free programs for migrants and refugees. Outside of martial arts, Pang is involved as a volunteer in support groups for Asian businesswomen and migrants. For her PhD, she researched her great-grandfather, the Christian Chinese revolutionary Huang Nai Shang.
Pang and husband Barry Pang, who runs his own kung fu school, are the parents of actor Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians), and the couple also owned a share in the racehorse Fiorante, the 2013 Melbourne Cup winner.
Pang says that in her self-defence classes at the Dandenong and Glen Waverley Snap Fitness gyms, in Melbourne’s south-east, she advises students to use the strongest parts of their bodies to attack the weakest parts of their assailants. She was proud to hear that an ex-student stopped a carjacker who was climbing into her car through the sunroof, by striking him in the throat with her knuckles. “I feel so good that I was able to help her, that I trained her to do that,” Pang said.
