Maybe now that it has been understood that Sil Lum is the Cantonese way of saying Shao Lin, we need to talk about what Shao Lin is, and how it relates to Chinese martial arts in general. It seems some people may not know about this yet.
As the word is used today, Shaolin does not exclusively describe any single school or style. The Shaolin temple on Songshan mountain is the legendary birthplace of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism and also became famous for the martial arts practiced there, everyone probably knows this already. What may not be known is that the actual styles taught there over the centuries were not necessarily consistent, nor were they necessarily invented by monks. A common belief supported by historical evidence is that over the years, generals, officials, soldiers, and other various lay-people visited and stayed at the temple at various times. Over the years, different styles were exchanged and changed and evolved, as always happens. Through the centuries, people came to the temple, shared and learned different types of martial arts, and then went out into the world again. Sometime during the fall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing dynasty, the temple was destroyed and its inhabitants scattered throughout the country (there were other times it was destroyed as well, but this was the one that all the stories and movies are about). This event is cited in the history of most styles as the time when one of the survivors of the temple came to their part of the country and started teaching shaolin martial arts.
And then there is the legend about the southern shaolin temple in Fujian province. Some people say there was a secondary temple started, maybe before the Qing destruction and maybe afterwards, where new martial arts evolved. Some people think the legend about the destruction and the five ancestors is actually referring to the southern temple, not the original one in the north.
There are a large number of different Chinese martial arts which use the name shaolin or trace their lineage back to shaolin. This might be one reason why some people have said that shaolin is the "birthplace" of all Chinese martial arts. Really, I don't think it was the birthplace but maybe more of a distribution center.
In the north, most longfist styles are or claim to be from shaolin, such as hong quan, tai tzu chang quan, hua quan. In the south, Hung Gar Kuen and similar related styles claim a shaolin legacy as well as Choy Li Fut, Fujian white crane, wing chun, five ancestors fist and other similar styles. The five animals are something mainly seen in these southern styles.
There are longfist lineages in the south of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well, and these will look different than the longfist styles in the north.
This is only the briefest of overviews, the relationships and origins of all these styles can get complicated. But the main point is, that the name "shaolin" or "sil lum" is so widespread that it really doesn't indicate anything about the content of the style using it.
