China's first test-tube baby enters college

BEIJING: China's first test-tube baby is among more than five million freshers to enter college in the fall semester starting next week, the state media reported on Thursday.

Zheng Mengzhu (19), has been admitted to the Xijing Vocational Institute in Xi'an, capital of the northwestern Shaanxi Province.

Her family in Tianshui, a city of the neighbouring Gansu Province, told a local newspaper she had left for Xi'an earlier this week, Xinhua news agency reported.

School authorities refused to comment, saying they would protect her privacy.

Zheng was born in the No. 3 Hospital affiliated to the Beijing University of Medical Sciences in March 1988.

She weighed 3.9 kilogram at birth and was bigger than average, said Prof. Zhang Lizhu who used test-tube technology to help Zheng's mother, a rural school teacher, become pregnant at the age of 39.

Her parents had been trying for nearly 20 years to have a child, Zhang said.

Zheng's birth, though 10 years later than the world's first test-tube baby Louise Brown, brought hope to infertile couples across the country.

Louise, born in July 1978 in Britain, gave birth to a naturally conceived boy last year.