It's 800,000 square meters of glass domes and rare plants. Occupying former wasteland in Shandong Province overlooking Jiaozhou Bay, it's China's newest tourist attraction – and despite being open less than a month, it's proving to be a huge hit. 

Inspired by its location at the confluence of a river and the sea, Oriental Eden tells the story of water in three parts: its scarcity, its abundance and its quality. 

Complete with storm forest and giant tropical biome, Oriental Eden is the culmination of a 10-year collaboration between the people of Qingdao and the people of Cornwall, in the UK's southwest.

The British version of the Eden Project first opened its doors in 2000, transforming a barren clay pit into an attraction with two huge domes, containing the world's largest indoor rainforest. 

A delegation from China first visited the site a decade ago and were impressed by how the project had renovated and renewed a barren stretch of land, providing jobs and a massive boost to the region's economy. 

"Bringing Eden here to Cornwall created this incredible economic and social impact – more than $3 billion has been poured into the economy here," the Eden Project's CEO Andy Jaspar told CGTN. "There's about 500 direct jobs here, and around 3,500 wider jobs that are dependent on Eden in this area. 

"When the Chinese planners came here 10 years ago, they said they wanted this in areas of China that are developing fast, that are perhaps in a post-industrial recovery."

So began 10 years of collaboration between the teams in Qingdao and Cornwall – a decade of working side by side, to learn from each other. It was, says Jaspar, friendly, inspiring and constructive.

Last April, a team from Cornwall headed out to China, to see how the new attraction was faring.  

"I was blown away," says Jaspar. "I just could not believe how rapidly they had completed everything." 

The success of the collaboration is paying dividends in China, where the attraction has already been visited by tens of thousands, but it's paying off the world over. 

The original Eden Project, nestled in Cornwall's rolling hills, is now working on collaborations with planners right across the world, to create Eden Projects as far afield as Australia.