Wing chun is a self contained internally consistent system (like nearly all TCMA). By this fact you can know it.
Wing chun is a principle based TCMA system. To have wing chun skills you need wing chun thinking. Any old skills developed at random through sparring are very unlikely to be wing chun skillsWing chun is a set of skills.
Techniques? Wing chun isn't optional deployment of techniques. It is a systematic approach to fighting. Not optional.The techniques of wing chun are ways of performing those skills.
The principles of wing chun are wing chun.The concepts and principles help you perform the skills successfully.
You are confusing performance in fighting with knowledge and ability in the wing chun system. Two different things. Without the correct thinking you will never be developing wing chun skill through performance. You will be developing something else, or nothing at all.It is by your attempts to use the techniques to perform the skills that you develop greater skill. Your performance and your performance alone tells you whether or not you are on the right track and whether our thinking is valid.
Of course there is. Wing chun only works one way; the way it was designed to work.Your view of there is only one right way to do wing chun
I spar regularly. As far as I know all of the PBVT guys spar regularly. You on the other hand appear to be some words on a screen. Your blatant lack of knowledge of the system doesn't make your story very convincingNo one who regularly spars thinks like that because they have that pounded out of them. Hendrik thinks like that. So do all the arm chair guys. That is the main characteristic of the arm chair martial artist.
The principles of wing chun are based on someone's idea of a good way to approach combat. The system is designed around these principles. The system only functions consistently according to these principles. There is no "your way" in wing chun. It is what it is, take it or leave it (or f@ck it up spectacularly), up to you.You do not get it I mean personal experience actually doing what you are talking about. A concept or principle is not a fully formed written in stone mandatory rule that must absolutely be obeyed. It is general idea that can help you use your tools more effectively. Through doing that you come to your own understanding of how to do things your way which you can only find by trying o do them.
You don't seem to have the vaguest idea about how the system functions.First you need to learn the movement or actions or techniques of wing chun. Then you practice performing them. Then if you want to learn to fight using your wing chun you need to practice doing that. This is what sparring is or should be practice fighting. You only get better at what you practice.
What is a "wing chun action"?If we spar and I use only wing chun actions and I put the hurt on you in my view I have used my wing chun successfully and who if they did the same would feel differently.
Why do you think wing chun people don't spar? Aren't you a wing chun person?If you see wing chun as a skill and didn't WSL say that? then your performance is the only way to see the skill and the only way to measure the skill and the only way to compare skills. This is why boxers and bjj people spar when they meet rather than exchanging ideas and demonstrating what they would do.
Wing chun is for fighting.When your wing chun is arm chair wing chun then all you have is ideas and performance is not what matters.
Having the right idea is important if you want to learn wing chun. If you don't care then it doesn't matter at all.I keep telling you it is not who has the right or best idea it is who performs their ideas better that counts.