My mother was from China from the Pearl River Delta region near Canton (not politically correct) and she was famous in town for her cooking abilities.
She would slice a piece of ginger about 1/8" thick and then smash it with the flat of the Chinese cleaver until it was pulverized and ready for use.
If she was flavoring the wok, she would simply slice the ginger and then throw it into the hot wok with oil and let it dance around to flavor the oil. Then she would remove it and add the other ingredients to assemble and finish the dish.
BTW, she always rebelled at the term, "stir fry." To her, it was all wrong. And I agree. A more proper term would be "high heat toss fry." It is a very fast, rapid, loud, violent form of cooking with lots of noise and hot oil coming in contact with cool ingredients and a lot of banging around as while being vigorously tossed by a long, heavy, metal spatula and the loud knocking caused by banging the spatula against the steel wok inside to knock ingredients that have temporarily stuck to the tool.
Jim