A bird's-eye view of the Huaxiacheng Scenic Area in Weihai, East China's Shandong province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In 2020, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment recognized Huaxiacheng as a national example embodying the concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains can be mountains of gold and silver".

Huaxiacheng's breathtaking beauty and the awe-inspiring efforts behind its creation are often compared with those of the Butchart Gardens, a 120-year-old world-renowned leisure garden in Canada, which was initially built on the site of an exhausted limestone quarry measuring 12 hectares.

"The most ravaged 16 quarries of the 44 quarries in the Longshan Mountain measured 62.4 hectares, which is 5.2 times the size of the Butchart Gardens, which shows how hard Xia's venture was," Zou said.