Reducing energy consumption and creating a comfortable thermal indoor environment in rural residential buildings can play a key role in fighting global warming in China. As a result of economic development, rural residents are building new houses and modernizing existing buildings. This paper investigated and analyzed a typical rural residential building in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in Northwest China through field measurements and numerical simulation. The results showed that making full use of solar energy resources is an important way to improve the indoor temperature. Reasonable building layout and good thermal performance of the building envelope can reduce wind velocities and convective heat loss. Insulation materials and double-glazed windows should be used to reduce energy loss in new buildings, although it is an evolution process in creating thermally efficient buildings in rural China. This research provides a reference for the design and construction of rural residential buildings in Northwest China and similar areas for addressing energy poverty.

In order to study the status of the indoor thermal environment of the northwest rural dwellings in winter, the thermal performance and the residents' adaptability are investigated and the indoor and outdoor thermal environment parameters are measured in Zhongwei region of Ningxia, the indoor thermal environment is analyzed and evaluated by the operating temperature. The results show that the northwest rural residents have strong adaptability to the cold indoor thermal environment in winter. In this area, the cold and daily temperature difference in winter is large, but the solar energy is rich, and it has the geographical advantage of developing passive solar building. The thermal performance of existing rural dwellings is poor and the indoor thermal environment is not ideal. It is necessary to enhance the thermal performance of building's heat collection, thermal storage and enclosure structure.