gapps free

Heya everyone, This is my first Xiaomi device so I'm new to the ecosystem. I was looking into getting a rom without google services for FOSS and privacy's sake. The Chinese rom comes without google apps and gets patched here to include them again. Where in the process does that happen and...

Is there any way to remove gapps from rom before flashing? I mostly use the built-in apps from Xiaomi and possibly some random app that I can fetch from apkmirror or f-droid