The Chinese constitute only about 10 per cent of the population of Lawas, but still the sign includes the message in Chinese characters (something I rarely see in Brunei). Maybe this is because there are quite a few Chinese guests to the resort, from places such as Taiwan and Mainland China. Indeed, few of the guests are local, so the ethnic balance of the population of Lawas is not really relevant.
Or maybe the Chinese are particularly guilty of failing to remove their shoes when entering a residential building. However, this latter hypothesis seems rather unlikely: it is just as much a Chinese custom to take off one's shoes when entering someone's house as it is in most of the rest of Asia. In fact, the idea of still wearing your shoes, all covered in dust and other muck, when walking around a home seems a particularly bizarre western custom, and there can't be many societies around the world that tolerate it. One might conclude that the sign only really needs to be in English.
So perhaps the inclusion of Chinese characters in the sign is just a courtesy, widening the languages displayed to include as many guests as possible.
