BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- 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.