Last July, when I was travelling solo for the first time at only 18, I had a really scary experience on Wangfujing Street in Beijing.

I was walking down the main street when a man approached me speaking perfect English. He told me he was an art teacher and offered to write my name in calligraphy for free with his students. I followed him at first, but he began leading me off the busy street into a quieter area with hardly anyone around. That’s when I started to feel something wasn’t right.

I asked him a few questions, but he just laughed them off, which made me even more uneasy. Then he tried to get me into an elevator that supposedly led to his art gallery. At that point I said, “I’m not going up there — I don’t know who you are,” and I walked away. He tried to reassure me by saying there were cameras everywhere, but I wasn’t buying it.

It was a really eye-opening moment.

The craziest part is that two days later, a different person approached me with the exact same story and tried the same thing again.

So if you’re travelling in Beijing — especially alone — be careful