Twenty-year-old BYU student from Reno stranded in China

Sharron Ann Gardner, 20, is in China as part of a group of 10 students from Brigham Young University.

She said she is fine, but is confined to a guest house at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, a city in northeastern China about 100 miles west of Nanjing.

Ms. Gardner and the other students arrived on Friday, the same day a NATO jet accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three.

Ms. Gardner called her parents here on Sunday to wish her mother a happy Mother's Day. In the call and in e-mail, she it's scary because there were demonstrations over the weekend at the university.

But she says she is somewhat relieved because the Chinese government has said the American students should be left alone.

The students are in the midst of a six-week trip to study communications in South Korea and China and are scheduled to return to this country May 27.

Her parents wish their daughter, who is known as Annie, were majoring in some other field.

"She's a journalist. She'll be on top of it and asking questions," Liz Gardner said.

In an e-mail to the Reno Gazette Journal, Ms. Gardner said the students spent the day in the dorm guest house staring out the windows, listening to the protesters and longing to be outside.

"I really didn't think it was a big deal, but then student protests started popping up all over China," she said in an e-mail to her parents.

"This morning I awoke to the shouts of protesters right outside the gates of my university dorm room. It was the first time I was seriously scared about the whole situation. The riots are serious.

"We have been instructed to 'lay low' and we are not allowed to leave out hotel. We don't know if we're going to have to come home."

Despite her concern, Liz Gardner had praise for her daughter's spirit.

"I think she's a gutsy girl to do this and break out a little from her comfort zone," she said.

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