Sometimes but not very often. The reason is that the rest of the words in the sentence together with the general situation is enough to make words unambiguous. This can be a challenge when learning because you have to map meanings onto both sounds and situations if that makes sense. It also means that Mandarin is great for making puns.
Does being situational make the language more efficient to speak? You don't need nearly as many words when the meaning is tied to context.
I've always been curious about east Asian languages and culture since they're relatively isolated from Western influence and historic ties to the British empire
This might be the case for illiterate people, but these days it's mandatory for Mainland Chinese citizens to complete at least 9 years of education. Different words with the same written form usually have different pronunciations, and different words with the same pronunciation usually have different written forms. It's rare for a word to carry different meanings solely depending on context.
