The first test-tube baby born on the Chinese mainland is among more than five million freshmen to enter college in the fall semester starting next week.

Nineteen-year-old Zheng Mengzhu 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 neighboring Gansu Province, told a local newspaper she had left for Xi'an earlier this week.

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 3,900 grams 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, Prof. 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.

(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2007)