I feel just like a normal person, despite being a little bit hi-tech," said China's first test-tube baby Zheng Mengzhu at her birthday party in Beijing.

Zheng, born on March 10, 1988 in the No.3 Hospital affiliated to the Peking University of Medical Sciences, made a trip to the laboratory of health science in the hospital where she was "created."

"It was magic. I'm too lucky," Zheng said as she watched the simulated progress of the production of a test-tube baby on a computer in the lab.

Test-tube baby research at the hospital started in December 1984. The research project, which was led by Professor Zhang Lizhu, proceeded for three years without being put into practice.

"All I can say is that I'm feeling so moved and so grateful to her," said Zheng as she visited the 87-year-old professor Zhang.

Zheng's mother Zheng Guizhen, from northwest China's Gansu Province, was 39 years old in 1988, and had tried for 20 years to become pregnant but failed due to a physiological dysfunction.

With the help of the invitro fertilization (IVF) technology, Zheng finally had her own baby. The new life turned out to be very healthy, at 52 cm tall and weighing 3.9 kg.

"It was technology that endowed me with the right to be a mother," Zheng said. The baby girl was named Mengzhu. Meng indicates that she was the very first while zhu was picked from doctor Zhang Lizhu's name as a tribute.

Two decades have passed and the baby has grown up to be a healthy beautiful woman who was admitted to the Xijing Vocational Institute in Xi'an, capital of the northwest Shaanxi Province, in 2007.

"I had been puzzled about my identity when I was young. I was feeling that some people were always saying something about me behind my back," confessed Zheng Mengzhu. "But I didn't feel uncomfortable as I got used to it."

Technology evolution

"When the world's first test-tube baby was born in Britain in 1978, we Chinese people found it inconceivable," said Zhang Guanglun, from the No.1 Hospital affiliated to the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong Province. He was one of the attendees of an international seminar on IVF technology, which was held on February 24-26 in Beijing.

"At that time many pictured the technology as putting a baby in a glass tube and breaking the tube when the baby grew big enough," the Guangdong doctor said.

The early days were tough for the research team. "At the very beginning we had so little knowledge even about the eggs," recalled Zhang, who was dubbed "mother of Chinese test tube babies." As there was little medical information available from foreign countries, the team had to carry out much basic research by itself.

China's first attempt to create a test-tube baby proved to be successful, but the technology aroused social opposition and dispute. Opponents claimed that a new life given in this way was unnatural.

"Actually the IVF technology is just a link of the human reproduction chain, and it requires eligible physical functions on the part of the human body," explained Qiao Jie, Director of the Reproductive Sciences Center at the No.3 Hospital affiliated to the Peking University of Medical Sciences.

The technology has developed in the past two decades since the success of Zheng. This provides hope for the 5 percent-8 percent of couples in China who cannot conceive, and may bring good news to families who have hereditary diseases.

In Beijing, 6,000 test-tube babies have been born to date, according to Deng Xiaohong, spokeswoman for the Beijing Public Health Bureau.

Deng noted that if a couple cannot become pregnant after a year of trying, they could be sterile and should consult a doctor immediately. In recent years, the global rate of sterility has risen to 10 percent-15 percent; while in China, the sterility rate is 6.89 percent.

The key to the future development of IVF technology is to raise the safety level and success ratio of this operation, said Zhang Guanglun.

Ma Xiaowei, Vice Minister of Health, pointed out that the supervision and management of the test tube baby operation should be enhanced as more reproduction centers are being established. Some of these institutions fail to live up to standards and could endanger the IVF operation and the health of recipients.

In March, Beijing designated 11 medical institutions to provide assisted reproduction services, or test-tube baby operations, according to the Beijing Public Health Bureau. "These institutions have carried out more than 6,000 successful operations and have provided consultancy for 20,000 people," said Deng. She added that other medical organizations in the city are forbidden from providing assisted reproduction services, which demand both technology and integrity of the medical staff.

Brief History of IVF Based on the findings of Min Chueh Chang's application of invitro fertilization to animals, the technique was developed for humans in Britain by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. The first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, on July 25, 1978, amid intense controversy over the safety and morality of the procedure. Brown was born to Lesley and John Brown, who had been trying to conceive for nine years, but without success because of Lesley's blocked fallopian tubes. On November 10, 1977, Lesley Brown underwent IVF procedures carried out by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. The landmark baby was born at 11:47 p.m. at Oldham General Hospital, Oldham, through a planned caesarean section delivered by registrar John Webster. She weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces at birth. Her birth was videotaped. She has a sister, Natalie, also conceived through IVF. Brown married on September 4, 2004. She gave birth on December 20, 2006 to a baby boy, after trying to get pregnant for around six months. The child was conceived naturally. Subhash Mukhopadhyay became the first physician in India, and the second in the world after Steptoe and Edwards, to perform the procedure and produce the test tube baby "Durga" (alias Kanupriya Agarwal) on October 3, 1978. Major pioneering developments in IVF also occurred in Australia under the leadership of Carl Wood, Alan Trounson and Ian Johnston. The world's third IVF baby, Candice Reed was born on June 23, 1980, in Melbourne, Australia. The first successful IVF treatment in the United States (producing Elizabeth Jordan Carr) took place in 1981 under the direction of doctors Howard Jones and Georgeanna Seegar Jones in Norfolk, Virginia