Americans and tourists alike frustrated by government shutdown

For Americans, the shutdown of the US government means inconvenience, temporary unemployment, financial difficulties and, to the chagrin of some, the end of a webcam monitoring the pandas at the National Zoo.

For Chinese tourists hoping to visit attractions such as the Statue of Liberty, it was a source of confusion.

Haiyan Wang's nine-year-old nephew, Tony, had been "wanting to go inside the Statue of Liberty for a long time," Wang said on Tuesday morning at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. She said her visiting relatives did not really comprehend what had happened in Washington because "the Chinese government never closes down."

And they weren't the only travellers to fall foul of the shutdown. If there was a symbol of America's pent-up frustration with a gridlocked political system, it was this: scores of elderly second world war and Vietnam veterans pushing past barricades to honour their fallen comrades at a memorial closed by a government shutdown.

The veterans arrived in Washington from Mississippi and Iowa, having spent thousands of dollars to charter "honour flights" to the capital. But like those of many others across the country, their plans collided with the reality of a Congress frozen by ideological disputes and unable to agree on how to keep the government open.

Lawmakers helped the veterans get past the barriers, but others around the country were not so lucky as tourists were blocked from their destinations and more than 800,000 federal employees were told to stay at home.

Cleveland Faggard, 89, who had been an aviation machinist for the Navy, had helped push past a black metal blockade after about a dozen Republican members of Congress arrived, responding to e-mailed pleas from the veterans. "I was just praying to the Lord," Faggard said. "He took care of it."