Step in the black mud, look up and listen to the music - the Xizhou Black Mud Festival is starting!

Black mud is the symbol of Xizhou Township, a gift from the Zhuoshui River.

Day and night, the Zhuoshui River washes slate from the Central Mountain Range down to the flatlands, piling up a thick, fertile layer of black soil. The soil nurtures sugarcane and rice, gives life to all things, sustains the farming villages and their people through a hundred generations, and accumulates a quiet, profound culture.

To pass on all kinds of memories and skills related to farming village culture, every year in mid-autumn the Xizhou Township Office and the Cizihbi Canal Industrial Culture Association hold a cultural festival. This year (2016) marks the seventh year. Every year, all the villages of the township, every elementary and junior high school, and every group come together to hold a lively street parade and various wonderful performances, and to promote the specialties and culture of the farming villages. This lets the local people rediscover Xizhou and fall in love with it again, and introduces this beautiful land at the top of the Zhuoshui River alluvial fan to friends all over Taiwan.

Starting last year, the cultural festival was renamed the Xizhou Black Mud Festival. On the grounds of the old Xizhou sugar factory, a black mud pool was dug and a water playground was built, so that children can roll around in the mud pit, come to know the land beneath their feet, and rediscover farming village culture.