How did "cha" -- the ancient Chinese sound meaning "tea" -- get to the Indian subcontinent, where the sound became "chai"? What rituals have blossomed around the making and sharing of this warming drink? How might chai rituals evolve into the future?

And how does one make the perfect vegan chai -- creamy, rich, and not too sweet?

Join us as we simmer in these delicious speculations while brewing a collective pot of vegan authentic chai.

ALL ARE WELCOME!

If you can, please bring one of the following as an offering to the chai:

3 black peppercorns;
1 stick of cinnamon;
1 pod of green cardamom;
3 cloves; or
1 small piece of ginger

All other ingredients and equipment for the chai ritual provided.

Key Info

Date: Saturday 20 September 2025

Time: 6 to 7:30pm

What: Learn how to brew an authentic vegan chai while taking a moment to pause and speculate.

** If you can, please bring an offering to the chai.

Host: Dr. Taun

Guest presenter: Riz Aswat

Tickets: Solidarity sliding scale*

Pricing info for "Chai Rituals"

"At cost" = £6
Subsidised = £3
Solidarity = £9

ESEA Heritage Month offer!

As part of our ESEA Heritage Month celebrations, we're offering a 10% discount on any food bought all day on 20 September, if you register for both this event and Dear Neuroscience: What happens when "home" is both everywhere and nowhere?

Just show your registration confirmation for both events when you pay for your meal!

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Chapunk Hour is organised by aunties Danbee “Tauntaun” Kim and Yen Ooi, who use speculative fiction to vividly imagine decolonising futures that celebrate and project Asian mentalities, languages, and cultures into the future. More broadly, they share the dream of fostering a vibrant community enthusiastically engaged with the politics of speculative storytelling, and ready to challenge the status quo by acknowledging how the stories we tell of our own futures – and the people and ideas we see thriving in the future – can powerfully impact our lives in the here and now.

Meet the Chapunk aunties!

Yen Ooi is a narrative designer, writer, and researcher whose works explore East and Southeast Asian culture, identity, and values. She's currently exploring zoefuturism - a futurism of life-becomings through connectedness, engagement, and relationality. Her projects are varied, but they aim to cultivate cultural engagement in our current technology-driven ways of living. Learn more at www.yenooi.com.

Danbee “Tauntaun” Kim (they/them) is a Korean-American field neuroscientist, community organiser, and storyteller. They nurture joyfully coordinated and evolving communities that build trust, harness insights, and engage meaningfully through clear communication and beautiful story-telling. Their research focuses on studying how multi-cellular biological systems have developed so many ways to navigate the unknown, including things we don’t even know we don’t know.

They are the guardian of two twin cats named Ramiro and Minima, and they aggressively befriend dogs, horses, goats, sheep, birds, pigs, and more, wherever they go. Tauntaun loves to learn while cooking, dancing, drawing, and playing music with friends.

To learn more, please visit danbeekim.org.

* Our Solidarity Sliding Scale

At Pulse & Pickle, we are trying out a sliding scale pricing system for some of our events, to acknowledge economic inequity and increase the inclusiveness of our events.

Pulse & Pickle is a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC) that operates a radical cultural centre and community hub on the Walthamstow High Street. We rely on our community to pay fairly, or as much as they can afford, to help us cover our running costs as well as provide affordable and accessible food and cultural experiences.

We also understand that people have different financial experiences and access to resources. We hope to make our events truly accessible to a diverse number of people no matter their financial status.

Pricing info for "Chai Rituals":

"At cost" = £6
Subsidised = £3
Solidarity = £9

The "At Cost" price covers the cost of delivering this event, with no mark-up included. In order to help us maintain a free-choice sliding scale ticket price system, we encourage those who can to pay the "Solidarity" price. 100% of ticket proceeds help us fulfil our affordable and accessible ethos.

These prices are simply here for your information -- when you register, you will have the option to freely choose how much you pay for a ticket. This includes paying less or nothing at all for those who can’t afford our subsidised prices.

A useful tool for thinking about where you might fall on the solidarity sliding scale is the Green Bottle: