Actually George, I have heard that it was Chinese immigrants who accidentally - because of the language barrier - got on the wromng boat and ended up, not in the USA working on teh goldfields and railways, but England, who eked out a living by sharing their food culture - by taking small pieces of fish and battering & frying them them - not an unheard of Oriental food preparation technique - as well as chopping up small chunks of a cheap readily available vegetable and serving them too....
:-P