The Beale code is named after the Beale brothers who hid around 24 tonnes of gold and silver in a hill side in the US. They left a coded message with a good friend as to the whereabouts of the stash, and a note to him explaining that if they died they were to take the note to someone else (who I cant quite remember). The note essentially referenced words in the Declaration of Independance (I think) by quoting numbers,
eg
20,132,1042,65,.. etc etc
and once deciphered would lead you to the exact whereabouts of the gold/silver.
Anyway the guy with the note passed on too, and thousands of people have tried to crack the code successfully but to date no one has. (Because there is a missing page from the note).
So somewhere just outside a small US town (again I can't remember which one off hand) there is an awful lot of money in the form of gold and silver waiting to be found.
The Chinese (other than Sun Tzu) were very late arriving in the land of Cryptography, and it appears that the most well known ciphers is the Mingma Code, which as I said consists of 4 digit blocks like that you published above and they were transmitted by telegraph; so I am making an educated guess that is what it is, although there is a similar code (named the Stitler Code) that takes on the same format.
I'll see what I can do, but it may take some time!
PS - Please yes, put up the other as well, thanks.
[This message has been edited by Icarus (edited 30 January 2001).]