If you’re driving on a highway or backroad in the coming seven days in Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada and spot a bus full of people sporting these tan baseball caps with green lettering, please give us a friendly wave.

If you see us in person, please say hello. We’ll respond in kind – in English, Cantonese, the Taishan – or Toisan – dialect of southern China and Mandarin.

We’re not a new group of conservation corps workers. We’re a group that left Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum on Tuesday. We like history. For many of us, our relatives left the Taishan – or Toisan – region decades ago.

We’re on a Chinese Heritage Tour to visit museums, historic places and mining areas to see how Chinese American pioneers lived in the American West in the 1800s.

The best thing is that we come in peace. We like learning, understanding and asking questions. On board will be students, writers, a museum director and retired researchers and teacher, just to name some of the occupations.

The Wing, as the pan-Asian museum is known, and the USDA Forest Service are sponsoring this year’s trip. Each tour participant is receiving a baseball cap.

Other things you should know: We’re curious. So, we might ask probing questions. We’ll talk about all aspects of history, including the ideas of tolerance, exclusion, endurance and change.

Oh, yes: We love to eat delicious food. That’s just who we are.