The study of traditional settlement and vernacular architecture in China began in the 1930s, most of which focused on traditional villages in the pre-industrial society and with the purpose of collecting primary data. This is because China’s long history that created a wealth of material culture making this part of the research work carried out earlier but far from complete. However, there are still some problems in current studies, such as focusing only on “style” or being trapped in grand narration only by typology. In contrast, in the context of the study of vernacular architecture in the western society, they explored a possible translation path from form to meaning through an “ordinary, everyday built environments” and “landscaping” approach, by borrowing the methods and theories of sociology, anthropology and cultural geography. In China, a few architectural scholars have started the study of vernacular architecture in the method of sociology. Among them, Huang Huaqing, in his doctoral thesis of Tsinghua University, namely “Spatial and Social Transformation of the Contemporary Factory-houses in the Tea Village of Tongmu, Mount Wuyi” focused on the mechanism between the rural space and social changes of contemporary tea villages in China, which fi rstly established the epistemological and methodological framework by proposing the approach of “spathnography”. “Spathnography” as the basis of epistemology and methodology, explores an approach bridging materiality with perception, elites with masses, history with present. “Spathnography”, as the name implies, combines the architectural spatial survey and the sociological ethnography research method. By drawing on the reading and understanding methods of the ordinary landscape context, researchers are suggested to start with the single household, record the inhabitants’ life scenes by observing subtle everyday life, and perceive the interactive relationship between materiality and perception. Through the observation of landscapes and the help of architectural perspective and detailed analysis, “spathnography” presents the architecture, behavior, belief and their self identity by deep anchor method. It exists in the researcher’s reading and translation of the material culture, which must be unbiased on the one hand, and based on careful observation on the other hand. Through referring to the theory and methodology of “spathnography”, this paper selected a Mongolian pastoral settlement in the western desert region of Inner Mongolia as the carrier. In most people’s eyes, the desert environment is regarded as the forbidden land of barren life, which is not suitable for human’s survival. But the Badain Jaran Desert’s special topography provides an unexpected living space for human beings. The Badain Jaran Gacha, a wellpreserved Mongolian settlement, with one Tibetan-Buddhist temple as its religious center, locates in the southern region in the desert. Herdsmen who are used to nomads have been lived here for generations and earn a life by the lakes. The lakes (more than 140 lakes) are believed to provide the life sustenance in the desert supporting camels, goats and horses that are herded by the original nomads that travel through the desert. To some extent, its isolation allowed it to survive untouched and safe from the globalization. The residential form is dominated by adobe houses built around the 1980s. On this basis, some dwellers expanded the new brick houses, while others still retained the original yurts, reed houses, round earth houses and other early settlement forms. In terms of landscape, a lake, a sand mountain and a dwelling constitute an ecosphere. It is argued that Badain Jaran Gacha is a powerful sample to study the nomadic characteristic, which truly reflects the sustainable survival concept of human and nature. After three indepth field works from 2015 to 2017, the supporter of the approach is the investigations of 21 vivid samples of pastoral households in Badain Jaran Gacha(100% coverage rate of resident herdsmen in Badain Jaran Gacha, and more than 50% coverage rate of resident herdsmen in Badain Jaran Desert) and detailed “mapping” of 5 typical houses, which including scattered type, semi-open type, three-way enclosure type and individual unit type. As one of the last settled settlements in Alxa league and even Inner Mongolia, there are traces of nomadic life in Badain Jaran Gacha. At the level of residence form, some herdsmen still have the structure similar to yurts, which reflects the characteristics of bottom-up spontaneous construction. In other word, the local nomads developed their building language through learning and experimentation. They borrowed the adobe construction technology brought by Han Chinese immigrants (mostly immigrants from Minqin County, Gansu Province), instead of the Han’s defense-style houses. The local form of residence evolved from mobile yurt and yurt-like building to courtyard. Meanwhile, with the elevation of furniture and the change of residence height, the daily life height of Mongols is also elevated from the original close to the ground to the height of modern life.